Problem running batocera from USB on Mini PC

fefo81 · 2023-01-20T14:12:37+00:00

Hello! I am struggling to run Batocera from USB. My pc is Minisforum UM690 with Windows 11 and my USB is SanDisk 512GB Ultra Fit. After a few issues I ma...

fefo81

First time I had the issue (it was not booting at all), I changed the port of the usb and it worked. It booted. This kind of trick does not work when rebooting

fefo81

I tried updating to Batocera beta and it doesn’t work.

fefo81

joinski

I asked Retro Game Corps and I’m waiting for reply

RaiderBlack

Did you solve your issue? I had similar problems with my Elitedesk 705 and for me it was a bios secure boot setting that was the culprit.

If you have secure boot settings on your Minis forum bios, make sure it’s completely disabled.

joinski

RaiderBlack

Secure boot is already disabled, but still i can not reliably (re-)boot Batocera from USB pen/flashdrive. I always have to go into the BIOS and select the usb drive via Boot Override. I really don’t know if this issue has to be fixed by Minisforum (with a bios update) or if this could somehow be fixed by batocera devs. I guess it has to be fixed by Minisforum, but they don’t see the fault on their side, because other OS boot fine from USB (i tested with LibreELEC for example, and there i do not have such issues with booting it from USB flashdrive).
It’s a pitty, that Retro Game Corps still not answered my question in the comments of his youtube video about the Minisforum UM690 :(

monty0000

I am having the same / similar problem with a UM690 that I see the initial boot-up Batocera image and then it immediately goes to a black screen. It never goes anywhere after that. An educated guess is that it is a display conflict of some kind with the Radeon 680M iGPU.

joinski

monty0000
What kind of drive do you use for booting Batocera? If usb flash drive, then try to select it in the Boot Override list of the bios. It should boot fine then (at least for me on my UM690 this is working).

monty0000

joinski It is a SATA 3TB 3.5″ HDD that I connect with a USB3 cable. It recognises and starts booting from the drive just fine - showing the Batocera startup image, but then after a second the screen goes black and all stops.

joinski

monty0000
Which version of batocera? Is it a fresh new install? Official batocera image downloaded from the homepage or from somewhere else?

monty0000

joinski ES V35 2022/09/17 13:13

joinski

monty0000
can you test this HDD on another machine? and another hdd on your UM690 as well?
just to rule out the cause of the issue

monty0000

joinski Yes, I have tested it on an old Acer desktop I have and it works fine. And I use the USB3 SATA connection on my system every day with other hard drives for transferring data from the UM690. There is no doubt the HDD is working and even starts working / booting on the UM690 and then just stops after the initial splash screen.

joinski

monty0000
Well then it seems, that the UM690 just does not boot every OS from every drive reliably.
Don’t know if Minisforum can do something about it (e.g. with a BIOS update) or if this can/must be fixed from Batocera side.

fefo81

joinski

Apparently Minisforum released a new Bios but it doesn’t seem really successful from the comments.

A have you had a look?

https://bbs.minisforum.com/threads/um690-bios-download.2649/

joinski

fefo81

I didn’t had time yet, to test the new bios version 1.13
But from what others report in this forum thread, there is a risk of bricking the device, if the flash fails (it already happened to some).
Maybe it is better to just wait a bit more.
Sad, that RGC from youtube did not answer yet, if he has the same issue. Would really like to know, if this issue (rebooting batocera from usb flash drive on UM690 gets stuck) is only occuring to some devices or to all UM690 (so it’s a general issue).

Tchock

I’m glad but also sorry to find out I’m not the only one to have this exact problem with the same exact mini pc. The only way to boot batocera is to go through the bios and force boot from the usb. Otherwise, most of the time, it will get stuck at “booting batocera.Linux”.

I did notice something peculiar. If I boot windows and then reboot with the usb drive inserted then it will boot batocera with no problems.

It’s such a shame as I took this pc just on purpose for retrogaming. I’m tempted to just install batocera on the internal drive. But it would be a shame to lose completely Windows and I don’t know if it would work.

joinski

Tchock

Do you have an external hdd/ssd which you could connect via USB? Because on my UM690 i can (re-)boot Batocera successfully from an external SSD drive, but not via USB flash drive. I still don’t understand, why that is and it is hard to explain this issue to the Minisforum support. This must be something, that should be fixable via a bios update.
Maybe we have to report this in the minisforum-forum to get more attantion from the support:
https://bbs.minisforum.com/

Tchock

joinski So, I’ve been trying out different USB sticks, but they keep giving me the same dang problem. I haven’t bothered with using an external SSD drive, because it seems like a waste of space with all my games already on my PC’s hard drive.

I’m willing to give it a shot. But if it’s going to work and I trust you it might, then it’s a very absurd situation.

I’m wondering then what if we add an ssd internally to the pc and try to boot batocera from there…

SSThing

I am working from memory here (so apologies if I am wrong).

On my UM350 there is an option in the bios boot settings to choose uefi, legacy or both.

Is there anything similar in the UM690 bios?

Tchock

SSThing no, nothing like that