I have a Dell Latitude 7390 Laptop running Windows 10, which I would like to try Puppy on, but the UEFI / BIOS is not detecting the bootable USB.
I got a generic USB drive and flashed BookwormPup64_10.0.4.iso to it (I used Linux Mint’s built in USB Image Writer). I installed the USB, and booted it up, pressing F12 until the boot sequence screen popped up. Except, no option for Puppy came up, nor any option for a USB flash disk was shown; just the Windows Boot Manager.
Secure Boot and Fast Start-up are both disabled. The Dell Latitude 7390 Laptop is running BIOS version 1.9.2, and the machine was built in August 2019.
To eliminate some variables, I took this same USB and plugged it into a Dell Desktop I have that, coincidentally, was built around the same time (Nov 2019). It is a Dell Inspiron 3671 running dual boot Linux Mint and Win 10, with BIOS version 1.5.0. When I booted up this machine and went to the boot sequence screen, Puppy Linux showed up as a bootable option and I was able to boot right to it, no problems.
Lastly, to eliminate another variable, I created a bootable USB of Linux Mint 21.3 and plugged that back into the first Dell Laptop, but this time, the LinuxMint USB showed up as a bootable option and I was able to run a live session.
One other interesting note is that I plugged the BookwormPup USB into the Dell Desktop when I had Linux Mint Running and it came up as “CD-ROM”. So I am wondering if BookwormPup was created as a CD-ROM and not as a USB and since the desktop as an optical drive it was detected and the Laptop does not have an optical drive, it ignored it.
Any advice would be appreciated!
