This means that Secure Boot is enabled in your BIOS settings.
Did this previously have Windows 7 or higher on it? That Windows OS may have had Fast Boot or Fast Startup enabled. Fast boot locks the drive preventing read/ write access.
Are you able to boot Windows at all?
LiveUSB is just what we call booting a Live Demo from the USB. It is unlikely to be called that by the Computer. It can vary, but it usually just lists the USB stick by model as a bootable option.
Yes, I had Windows 10 on there. The hard drive was acting up - I ran CrystalDiskInfo on it and it returned some yellow warning lights. Somewhere before I starting testing Zorin I removed the Windows partition [I think], but the fact that I keep getting Recovery blue screens on initial boot tells me Windows is still involved.
In other news, it [appeared] Zorin bricked the second USB stick I created. That when it struck me...it's me, not Zorin. After I restarted the machine, I reformatted those two USB sticks with ntfs and the original Lexar and newer 32Gb PNY sticks came back to life, showing up as working drives in my Win11 laptop.
I'll go back to the BIOS setting in that old Acer laptop and look for Secure Boot or Fast Boot or Fast Startup.
So the Secure Boot was set to 'Enabled' and there was no way to modify the field. If I changed the boot from UEFI to Legacy, the whole Secure Boot field disappeared.
To enable Secure Boot in Legacy mode requires several additional steps - On your machine, it may just simply disallow Secure Boot with legacy. In which case, using Legacy may solve your issue.
BIOS is set to legacy, boot from USB stick works, the install screen only offers me to install on that same USB stick. I can't find any info about the internal hard drive. I've posted verbatim every thing I see re the partition info and even posted a picture of that screen. Ran gparted and went over that here. Not sure what else I can do to put Zorin on my C drive....any help? Thanks.
Is it possible that the drive is failing?
One last thing i can think of - in your BIOS settings, are you able to see if you are using RAID or AHCI?
I think we're going to submit a repair claim with the warranty company - this Acer laptop is having the same problems with the hard drive that an original Acer I bought years ago. It's $95 to start a repair at a shop, but I can get a 3rd replacement for about the same. This time I'm hoping it's a different make and model!
To answer your question in any case, it's AHCI. I have a few more days to play around with it before I send it back.
I have a 3rd laptop [Lenovo from 2015] that I may use to try Zorin. It's even older [2015], but it still boots to Windows 8 [ugh, I know] and it might be a good challenge.
Thanks everyone! - Mike
Hello 337Harvey. Thanks for answering. It's been a few weeks - in the interim, I got my original Acer back with a new hard drive. I'm going to assume it's fine. It has Windows 10. I'll put it aside and use it as a backup.
I dug up the Lenovo. I was able to get Windows 10 on it. It has no hardware issues, and all the drivers are up to date. I saw a great review of Zorin recently on ZDNet, so I'm inspired to try the dual-boot on this laptop. I really don't want to lose the partition with the Windows 10 OS. I'll read some of the HOW TO here and see if I can find a way to boot with a Zorin USB stick, carve out a partition for Zorin, and then put it there.
Thanks for your very thorough instruction list - sorry my setup situation changed mid-project.
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