X220 booting from USB

So the X220 is acting up about booting from the USB. yesterday it would boot from 1 of my bootable USB's containing Archlinux created with the Universal USB Installer, but wouldn't boot one that contained Xubuntu. Today it refuses to boot either one, booting straight into windows. I went into bios and made sure USB HDD is at priority 1, USB CD at priority 2, and USB FDD at priority 3, with the primary HDD somewhere further down the list. Despite this it still boots into windows straight away. This is extremely weird; none of my other laptops had issues.
This is only an issue with bootable USBs. I tried 3 different USB drives to no avail.
I also tried a USB DVD drive to boot from a CD and that worked fine, so I don't know why it's not booting from the USBs.
Anyone know what's going on or have suggestions?

 

You may want to check this out. Though you are booting from a USB thumb drive, the latest BIOS for the X220 might correct the issue.

Lenovo Support - BIOS Update Utility for Windows 7 (32-bit, 64-bit), XP - ThinkPad X220, X220i, X220 Tablet, X220i Tablet

Though you are booting from a thumb drive, it's still basically a bootable CD transferred to a USB drive. If you don't have BIOS v 1.11 I'd give it a try.

 

My x220 came with 1.11 so I'm pretty sure it's not a BIOS issue. It's just acting extremely random, withit sometimes working, sometimes not working.
From time to time on boot (when the diagnostic/thinkpad logo would display), key entries such as F1 or F12 to go to boot list are not accepted.

F12 doesn't seem to work that well either. While it does bring up a boot list, selecting anything other than the windows installation would cause the screen to go blank for a few seconds before reloading the boot list. For example, if I select my bootable USB drive with xubuntu on it, the x220 would go blank for a few seconds before reloading into the boot list. It's not a USB issue because I tested each drive with an older laptop and it was able to boot from each drive just fine.
I'm thinking maybe it's a UEFI/Legacy issue? Perhaps I should disable UEFI and boot legacy only?

 

update: still not working.
not a UEFI/legacy issue. Really have no idea why it's not booting from the USB now when it sometimes did before.
Guesses:
1. Intel boot agent
2. PXE

 

I have had the same problem with my desktop last night. I don't know the exact reason, but taking USB drive out and putting it back in solved the problem for me.

 

You're not plugging into a USB 3.0 port, right?

 

You do realize that USB 3.0 is backwards compatible don't you?

 

I don't think the BIOS can see the USB3 port. It only has drivers for the USB2 ports.

Also, chaose, I'm having similar issues booting from a USB dvd drive. It works fine if i have UEFI Only selected in BIOS; with either Both or Legacy selected, however, it will just hang on a black screen when it tries to boot from the disc (also running 1.11). Not sure if it's the same issue or not, but I'd definitely be interested to hear if you find a solution.

 

They don't boot (at least not currently on Thinkpads) and they don't work (even with USB 2.0 devices) without drivers.

 

They would still boot as a USB 2.0 device. I am almost positive of that (but I have no proof either way).

 

uSb 3.0 port on the samsung series 9 won't boot either-

 

I have the i3, so I'm 100% sure these are usb 2.0 ports.
In the end I just burned the livecd Image to a CD and installed it from a external USB dvd drive. I really don't know why it boots from the external optical drives but not USB.
I'm assuming by default the hard drive is formatted to use MBR. Which would mean that the windows os would be using legacy boot since.

At least I don't have to deal with this anymore (until I decide to buy a SSD or mSata and reinstall).

 

Has anyone made any progress on this? My tablet finally came on Friday and I've been trying to boot from a usb HDD all night. It doesn't matter which usb port I use. It tries to boot but shows the message "Media test failure, check cable". But I know it's good - I've been accessing the drive just fine from other laptops the whole time. I've been playing with the UEFI/Legacy settings and they don't seem to do anything either. And now using the ThinkVantage button to get into the settings during bootup has stopped working, so I can't get in to tweak it any further...

 

I don't know if our issue is the same; the USB stick was prepped by running drive Q: 's recovery.
My issue is that the exe doesn't create a bootable USB image, though all the image data is there.
so what I did was
1. Use a 16GB USB and run the app on drive Q: to create a "bootable (NOT...) image"
2. Copied the data on the USB to HDD
3. Make a real bootable USB by following instructions here
How To make Bootable USB
*i stopped after running BOOTSECT.EXE/NT60 <usbDriveLetter>:*
4. Copied the lenovo image data from HDD back onto USB

And now I'm reverting the system back to the way it was to send it back.
*receiving the new one with the finger print reader*

btw - the windows key sticker is hidden by the battery;
if i have an OEM Win 7 Pro - can i run that image and use the key on the machine? just wondering if anyone has tried.

Cheers.

 

That really surprises me. Perhaps when Intel finally integrates USB 3.0 support, it will be bootable.