I did as you suggested and I was able to create bootable Zorin 17.1 Core USB. So I installed it on my Dell Latitiude e5430 and - - - it did the same thing! "Invalid partition table!". I know I created it for MBR, I double checked.
I have come to the conclusion that Zorin 17 is inherently set up for GPT, so it doesn't matter what program I use to create a bootable flash drive.
This bothers me because Zorin and other Linux systems like to advertise they will run on older hardware. My system is a few years old but has plenty of horsepower: i5 processor, 4 cores and 8 Gb of RAM. Not too shabby.
So I only see 3 options:
Live with it as is
Install an older version of Zorin (16? or Zorin Lite?), but I don't know if they will support MBR, or even try another distro like Linux Mint
Dell says there is an update for the BIOS on my machine, I could flash the BIOS and see if that makes a difference, but I don't think it will.
A 4th option would be if one of you guys comes up with another work around.
Any thoughts on what I should do?
I really appreciate everyone's help. By the way, Ponce-De-Leon I tried installing Rufas, it wouldn't let install anything later than 3.2, and after I did I couldn't get it to work. This was on my desktop machine running Zorin 16.3.
Yes do this for sure - BIOS updates are most always a good thing
Try that, you may need to place the file on a USB and perform the flashing from within BIOS. I know a lot of the Dell stuff likes a Windows system to 'install' the BIOS flash files, then reboot and grab it from the HDD/SSD locally. You can do this with a USB most of the time - we'll just have to see..
Were you able to get into your BIOS by chance? See if this helps - Dell and many others usually are F2 to get into BIOS; and this model looks different than the one you have but, should be the same:
In the BIOS settings - take a look for anything relating to Legacy / CSM options, if available have these disabled. Same for Secure Boot to install; you can set this up later if need be but, definitely disabled for install purposes.. Also. if you see any RAID or disk options have that set to AHCI; RAID doesn't really work OOB with most distros.
(edit) And I definitely forgot to ask: When you're installing, are you also downloading and installing updates with the OS install? That.. has never worked for me lol .. If you're doing that, give it one more go without the updates during the OS install.
SUCCESS! SUCCESS! SUCCESS!
You were correct, I used F2 and got into the menu. I changed it to UEFI from Legacy in the Boot Sequence menu option.
Unlike the video that was posted by PlumpKibbles - at .50 when he changes it to UEFI the boot sequence above it just "disappears". When I did it the boot sequence changes from a list of HDD, USB etc to just "UEFI Hard Drive".
So I thought well that won't allow me to boot from the USB. But I was able to check the box next to it to in effect turn it off.
Then, under Secure Boot it says Disabled and the Legacy Option ROMs is off. So, hoping that would mean I could still select USB to boot from when I restarted and pressed F12 and selected USB.
That worked. When I was done installing I restarted and it no longer said Invalid Partition Table.
However it still restricts me to only 256 Gb of HD for Zorin. I have a 512 GB drive. This also happened when I had the Invalid partition table message. When I use the Disk utility it says I only have 2 partitions instead of 3 (which I had originally - see image in my previous post). I assume the first is for the Boot and the the 2nd is for Zorin, but it is only 256. What am I missing?