Re: ThinkPad X260 won't boot 14.3-RELEASE installation media

On 18/06/2025 14:13, Arthur Chance wrote:
> I have a ThinkPad X260 that's already running FreeBSD 13 successfully
> but want to do a fresh install of 14.3-R. It consistently refuses to
> boot from an installation memory stick. What happens is that I select
> the USB stick in the F12 boot select menu, the screen goes black for a
> while, and then the machine prompts me for the geli decryption key for
> the onboard disc and boots into the already installed 13-R system.
> 
> I have tried:
> 
> a) using a USB 3.2 memory stick, a USB 2.0 memory stick and even a micro
> SD card in a USB adapter
> 
> and
> 
> b) using both memstick.img and disc1.iso images on all of the above
> 
> and
> 
> c) inserting the memory stick in every USB port on the X260.
> 
> None of these combinations will boot on the X260. All of them boot
> successfully on my wife's ThinkPad T460s. They also boot successfully on
> a cheap Shenzhen cube I've got lying around.
> 
> For completeness, to save people asking the obvious, both ThinkPads are
> already running non-Windows OSes with Secure Boot off, pure UEFI boot
> with CSM enabled on both. This is the amd64 version of FBSD, downloaded
> this morning from https://download.freebsd.org/releases/ISO-IMAGES/14.3/.
> 
> Does anyone know of any hardware gotchas or other problems that might be
> biting me here?
> 

For completeness I managed to find an old DVD burner and some discs to
go in it, and burned the disc1.iso image. Same as above, it boots
fine(*) everywhere except the X260.

(*) But sllooowwww. I'd forgotten how slow spinning things can be.

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