Did I brick my UX32? Can't boot from usb and getting "Operating System Not Found" after deleting partitions

Hi everyone, I bought the ux32 zenbook to run linux on exclusively, and ended up screwing it up in the process.

Basically this laptop is setup with a soldered on to the motherboard, 24gb internal SSD and a slot for a "storage" drive. I replaced the storage drive with a 256gb SSD and was planning to boot from the internal SSD and store all files on the other drive. The motherboard is UEFI/EFI enabled.

Started out that I could boot legacy bios USB flash drive and run the Arch installer, no problem. Partitioned the non-internal drive with everything (use entire disk), and the computer went to a black screen when booting.

Whenever I plugged the USB drive back in, I could choose the boot device (hd1,0) and it would boot fine. However, despite setting my bios settings, the computer would always choose to boot from the internal SSD first, and since the GPT tables still read for windows, I tried reinstalling Arch again.

This time I deleted all partitions on both drives, and set an EFI partition as the boot partition on the internal SSD, /boot on the internal SSD, and /home on the main SSD. The installer crashed trying to download files from the repos, and rebooted.

Upon restarting, the computer WILL NOT recognize the same USB drive as a bootable media, and complains "Operating System not found." I can view the drive in BIOS and even have an option to boot from the USB drive when pressing F2 at startup, however, I get the same message.

I've tried reformatting the drive with unetbootin, universal usb installer, as well as a variety of linux distros, as well as GParted, and the computer will not recognize the usb drive as a valid boot medium. I've followed two guides on how to set up a USB drive for UEFI booting, but the BIOS does not recognize the USB drive as a UEFI enabled device (it used to, before deleting all partitions), now all it finds is that it is a regular legacy bootable drive (... which doesn't boot)


What the hell did I do, and how do I fix it? I don't own an external CD drive reader, but if that is absolutely necessary, I can find one.

 

I had a few similar sounding issues with my new notebook after installing Ubuntu, until I realized that I had to use Ubuntu 12.10 with has the latest version of GRUB 2 which is needed to cope with UEFI machines. I also found a linux program called boot-repair that is excellent for sorting boot up issues with grub and with new machines etc. sounds like you got yourself in a bit of a pickle though with the bootable usb drive...can you use another machine to make the usb drive bootable again using something like "start-up disk creator" tool. ?

 

I've tried using unetbootin and universal usb installer to try arch. I've tried using Bridge Linux (which claims to have UEFI compatibility out of the box), but it still won't work.. I also tried a GParted rescue disk, and Hirens boot DVD (written to a USB drive).

I am going to go buy an external DVD drive to see if it will boot of of that, perhaps it will allow me to boot off of that.

Does the ux32 boot from SD card? I have an SD card I can use too.

 

I don't know what your options are in the BIOS, but try disabling secure boot. You may need to change your setting for legacy booting as well, unless you make an EFI bootable USB stick.

Not sure which distros you prefer but here are some pages that will help:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UEFI
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Unified_Extensible_Firmware_Interface
3.3.ÂMaking Minimal Boot Media
Debian -- News -- Debian Installer 7.0 Beta3 release

If the SD card reader is a USB device it will probably be bootable, but it will almost definitely not be if it is a PCI device.

 

I'm guessing then that you already tried Grub4DOS and the USBFormat utility then...? It may be an inconvenience, but an external optical drive may solve your issues (well, booting to a disc will anyway - it won't fix the booting from USB problem).

Try the SD card! I haven't had a chance to make one bootable and try it myself, but it's worth a shot.

 

I'll definitely try the SD card. I have about two hours after my shift before the stores open, so I'll have time. Apparently there was a new BIOS that came out yesterday, perhaps it has a few more options. I'll see if I can "EZFlash" it from the USB drive I've got, hopefully it will have an option to disable secureboot. The options in the BIOS as is are very limited, hah.