When you changed the boot order - are you saying you could not?
OR it did not accept the change?
Or you could, it accepted it, but then the USB stick failed in some way and instead of booting from it, it defaulted to your hard metal install?
While you are in your BIOS...
Please ensure Secure Boot is disabled in the Security tab.
Please ensure that you are set to AHCI, not to RAID
It did change the boot order and accepted it. I'm back in the BIOS now and the order is what I changed it to. So I guess the USB stick failed somehow? Supposed to be able to use it over and over....
Secure Boot is disabled, but where do I find AHCI? Not seeing that...
According to:
https://support.hp.com/hk-en/document/ish_9631042-9631101-16
Access the BIOS/UEFI Firmware Settings:
Power on or restart your HP computer.
Immediately press the F10 key repeatedly (about once every second) until the BIOS Setup Utility is displayed.
Navigate to Storage Options:
In the BIOS Setup Utility, use the right arrow key to select the Storage tab.
Use the down arrow key to highlight Storage Options, then press Enter.
Change the SATA Emulation Mode:
Locate the setting labeled SATA Emulation or a similarly named option.
Use the arrow keys to select your desired mode: AHCI or RAID.
Press F10 to accept the change and save the settings.
Apparently my BIOS is in UEFI mode. I was messing around trying to get it to boot off the USB stick and it happened to give me 3 choices of Zorin, Advanced Zorin (something like that), and something else. I clicked the last one and got into Boot Manager and it says UFEI. Right under that, it says Boot from EFI File. Don't know what these are.
Now I'm trying to get into Storage Options, but I don't see anything like that. My choices in the BIOS at the top are Main, Security, System Configuration and Exit.
That is Extensible File... Index, I Think? It is your bare metal install, you are seeing, not the USB.
Hmmm... is it not booting off the USB then? I assumed at first that it would be just like it was the first time, but just before your last reply here, I was thinking maybe those 3 choices were from the USB since it happened again just now when I turned it off and back on again.
Guess that's not correct... restarted again and it went normally. Time to stop and rest my brain and try again tomorrow...
You say you purchased a USB with Core already on it? I think that might be the issue. Do you have another computer you could download the latest .iso to? I would then download Ventoy and format your USB with Ventoy and then just drag the downloaded .iso to Ventoy. But first do you know the capacity of the USB? 8 Gb/16 Gb? In terms of your hard drive these are relatively easy things to do, but first you need to carefully remove it to see if it has pins or sideways L connections. If it is pins you will be limited to using a spindle drive replacement. If not I would go for a Crucial M.2 drive. They come with extra filling template to ensure secure fit if needed.
Yes, I did. No idea of the USB capacity, though. I don't know what Ventoy is? I hate to do anything to it since I don't really know what I'm doing. I got the USB because it was a whole lot cheaper than buying a new computer with Zorin already on it and it was supposed to be so easy to load it on! lol Well, technically that part WAS easy. It's just the part now trying to get it to work the way its meant to... Waiting for the local tech guy to call me back to see about the hard drive. I still haven't tried again to reinstall. My attempts last night failed since I couldn't get it to boot off the USB.
Funny... or doh!... just now thought to put it in and open it up! Yikes... although... it's not showing up! So... maybe not being able to boot off it IS a USB stick problem
Ok... so I couldn't get the USB stick to show up on my new computer, but tried on the old one with Zorin. It shows up! It's 8 GB. Looking at the hard drive, the Assessment says "Disk is OK, 2 bad sectors (20 C/ 68 F). So are the bad sectors the problem?
Did you install Zorin OS?
OR is this a Portable Zorin On USB Stick that you are running Zorin OS on the USB (Only works with USb Stick plugged in)?
I'd say it depends which sectors. I suspect USB are similar to other drives that have boot sectors. If you are able to browse the USB in another computer, would be worth checking if you can see an .iso present. I would be tempted to just buy a decent USB stick like SanDisk, Patriot, Integral. You can download Ventoy from here:
Then if you can't access the .iso, contact Team Zorin as you said you had purchased Pro.
I thought I had purchased Pro on the USB stick (from Privacy Academy), then I found out it was just the regular (Core?) and then went to Zorin and upgraded to Pro Lite. It is installed on my old computer and the upgrade to Pro Lite is installed and it does work without the USB stick plugged in. No idea why my newer computer doesn't show the USB. I only see the main disk on that one.
Looking at the USB stick on the Zorin-installed computer, it lists contents as ISO 9660 (version Joliet Extension). Is that what you mean by accessing the .iso?
No. I was wondering if it had the Zorin .iso which would be labelled like this:
Zorin-OS-17.3-Lite-64-bit.iso
If your other PC won't boot from the USB it will be because it has a newer version of Windows which has somethings called Fast Boot and Secure Boot enabled in the BIOS. You would have to disable these in oder to boot off the USB. Additionally within Windows Power Management you would need to turn off the hard drive's sleep mode as newer version of Windows from 8.0 upwards has a setting which prevents the hard drive from fully powering down when you turn off the computer.
Ok - I don't see anything like that for the .iso.
I haven't tried booting from the USB yet on the newer computer (Windows 11). I only tried looking at the USB drive, but it didn't even show up to open it and look at it. It's as if it doesn't exist there.
I was thinking about trying booting off it, though, and just trying it out on the newer one. When booting off the USB, it gives you a choice of trying it out without making any changes to the current OS
Just tried booting off the USB on the newer computer and it still doesn't recognize it. Got into boot options but couldn't change anything to tell it to boot off the USB. Windows was the only choice given to boot off of.
Did you go into the BIOS and turn off secure boot and fastboot? It also might have TPM 2.0 present. Try changing it to discrete.
I'm trying again now and looked up how to get into the BIOS on windows 11. Said to hold the Shift key while restarting. So now I'm in the BIOS and the Boot Configuration, but it shows absolutely no choice in booting off the USB. Still doesn't recognize it at all - even when trying to add a boot option. I'm thinking that maybe it's set up that way so you can't put another OS on it. After all - they have that darn Copilot thing on there that takes a snapshot every second. Can I disable that somehow?? When I have my external hard drives connected, it shows those. That's why I'm thinking they don't want me to change it...
I did turn off secure boot
Looking now at USB Configuration and Enable USB Boot Support is enabled. I don't understand why I can't get it to boot from USB if that's the case...
You need to turn off fast boot as well as secure boot. Windows 11 now specifies you have to have TPM enabled (Trusted Platform Management). This started out at 1.2 and now is at 2.0. Unfortunately there is no way to turn TPM off but it has two states, TPM 2.0 hardware and TPM 2.0 discrete - see if you can find that. You may have to expand various options in the BIOS tabs/side panel. You also need to go into Windows hidden Power Management setting relating to the HDD - this is set to never be turned off but to be in a permanent sleep state. This has to be switched off as it prevents other devices from booting.
In terms of Co-Pilot:
Just to add that Group Policy Manager is only available if you have Windows 11 Pro. Wnich means if you have Windows 11 Home you may have to keep turning it off as it does not come with Group Policy Manager.
In the past I have always made the point of using the Pro version of Windows as you get more control over it. The worst example of a version of Windows Home edition was XP. The administrator account was hidden and did not come with a password ("Windows XP, your most secure version of Windows yet" ... yeah, right!). You had to boot Windows XP Home in safe mode to access the Administrator account and then secure it with a password. I wonder how many XP Home devices ever got rectified.
I used to have XP Pro. I liked that the best of anything so far. I want to like Zorin Pro the best if I can ever get it to do things the way it should...
I managed to find TPM and was able to turn it off. Didn't see any hardware or discrete options. Did not find fast boot anywhere. No matter what I do, I can't get the newer computer to boot off the USB. Can't get the older one to boot off it, either, for that matter. However, at least the older one will recognize it.
About ready to give up. Didn't hear anything from the local tech guys so I'm going to call them again tomorrow. Their message thing was weird, so I'm not sure they even got my message.
I'll let you all know what I find out tomorrow. I really appreciate the help!! Thanks!
Didn't actually get to talk to the tech guy yet but we did email. Will cost more than I want to spend for him to replace the hard drive so I asked him if he had another older laptop that still had good hardware that I could try Zorin on. Probably have to wait till Monday to hear back.
How easy is it to replace the hard drive myself? I used to be more "into" the tech world but have gotten away from it and have never opened up a laptop - only a desktop tower...