Unable to boot from USB :( Can I boot from a CD?

[Kevanf1]

I believe a similar question has been asked in the past but it had no replies. In my case it is slightly different. I am totally unable to get a boot from a USB stick I have tried various USB thumb sticks/drives and yes, I have also tried the Plop boot manager. No good at all. The machine is old but why it doesn't have USB boot capability I don't know and I cannot find an updated BIOS that might make this possible. The computer is a HP Pavilion 7916 built sometime around 2006 or so I am told. I only picked it up a week ago as it was given to me. My thoughts being to use it to run openELEC rather than it go to landfill.

So, can I burn the USB .iso image to a CD and will it work? OR is there a workaround?

Please

[gda]

Forget it, it will not work. The CPU is too weak, the built-in graphics too and there is no PCIe-Slot for a supported graphic card. A graphic card for the PCI slot would cost more than the pc is worth. I don't know why so many believe OpenELEC is good for weak and old hardware?

Gerald

[Kevanf1]

Ok, this is the first time I have heard any of this. With the utmost respect, as I bow to your knowledge, I've heard of plenty of people running openELEC on hardware not even as capable as this one, plus it is lauded as being slim on resources because it is built purely for the purpose of streaming media. Incorrect advertising maybe? It sucked me in anyway If this is the case then it looks like plan b and running Puppy with MiniDNLA.

[lrusak]

It's all about the GPU. OpenELEC will run on a very weak CPU, but it the GPU is weak it will be useless because you won't be able to watch anything.

[Kevanf1]

This is where I don't understand I'll be streaming content not watching them from the PC. My intention was to stream to a ROKU box so the ROKU does all the rendering not the PC.

As an aside, I have actually watched videos (not HD admittedly) on this very PC. Full screen no problem..... Yes, I was rather surprised myself

[gda]

This is where I don't understand I'll be streaming content not watching them from the PC. My intention was to stream to a ROKU box so the ROKU does all the rendering not the PC.

OpenELEC is a very thin layer of an operating system around XBMC. If you stream to another box, you don't need XBMC, why then OpenELEC?

Gerald

[Kevanf1]

Possibly I don't need openELEC? From everything I have read, but maybe not understood or just got plain wrong in my old head, OE was designed from the ground up as a PC media theatre OS. Ok, admittedly I don't need a full blown htpc at this moment in time (this is important). I wanted to try it out for streaming purposes to start with and then in the near future look at building a custom htpc and use OE on that. Why openELEC? Because it's not meant to be an office or gaming machine OS in the first place. I presumed because of this it would be quicker to run, use less resources etc.... Sad to say I can't run it on this particular machine so it means doing as lean an install of Debian as I can and use something else for the time being. This is a shame as I have heard such good things about openELEC..

[chewitt]

Although we are minimalist and performant OpenELEC is not, never has been, and never plans to be a distro for recycled old hardware. The project actively targets current/recent generation HTPC hardware and we focus things like driver support in that direction. The older the hardware is the greater the chance we are missing drivers that we have no interest in adding. You are always welcome to install OE and if it runs okay for you that's great, but if it doesn't run okay your best option is an older Ubuntu image that has better legacy hardware support. There is no official "before this date is not supported" policy but as a rule stuff that doesn't boot from USB is probably not the best candidate. There are instructions on the wiki for manual install which you can do while booted from an Ubuntu LiveCD.

[gda]

Why openELEC? Because it's not meant to be an office or gaming machine OS in the first place.

Yes, this is true, but it is meant to start XBMC and not much more.

Gerald

[klojum]

Yes, OpenELEC is meant to start XBMC, but only if certain prerequisites are met. And a 2006 prehistoric personal computer with ditto graphics is not one of them. We are not magicians.