Can't boot Fedora 41 live ISO on "legacy" BIOS system (HP Compaq 8000 Elite)

I have this desktop PC: HP Compaq 8000 Elite (Intel Core 2 Duo, 4 GB RAM).

Previously I had Fedora 36 installed on it and it has been working fine. Lately I wanted to upgrade to Fedora 41, so I just downloaded the latest live iso and flashed a usb drive.

But unfortunately it won’t boot.

I’ve tried different editions and spins, but it seems that the partition table is the same on all v41 releases (so is 40 and 39 - otherwise I guess I could just install an earlier version and upgrade from there).

Just as an experiment I also tried flashing the latest version of kali, and that works fine (it’s recognizing the usb drive and booting the system).

This is the partition table (output from parted) when flashing Fedora 41:

Model: Kingston DataTraveler 3.0 (scsi)
Disk /dev/sde: 15.5GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: gpt
Disk Flags: 

Number  Start   End     Size    File system  Name       Flags
 1      32.8kB  1659MB  1659MB               ISO9660    hidden, msftdata
 2      1659MB  1672MB  13.2MB  fat16        Appended2  boot, esp
 3      1672MB  1672MB  307kB                Gap1       hidden, msftdata

And this is when flashing kali:

Model: Kingston DataTraveler 3.0 (scsi)
Disk /dev/sde: 15.5GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: msdos
Disk Flags: 

Number  Start   End     Size    Type     File system  Flags
 1      32.8kB  5037MB  5037MB  primary               boot, hidden
 2      5037MB  5041MB  4194kB  primary

So I guess it’s just because the BIOS on that system doesn’t work with the gpt partition table? Would it be possible to alter the partition table and make Fedora 41 boot anyway? I’m a bit unsure what to try next - do you have any suggestions?

I’ve looked for security options related to boot in BIOS setup, but havn’t had any luck toggling options that might have impact on boot security.

You did not say how you are booting. The iso is hybrid so the user can choose either MBR or UEFI boot mode, which also determines the boot mode of the installed system.

Are you saying that the machine does not have a very standard uefi bios?
Almost every system I have seen for more than 10 years has uefi bios and can be set to boot either uefi only or able to select csm (legacy) or uefi. I have not seen a modern system that has the (really old) bios that can only boot in legacy mode. That seems to have disappeared almost 20 years back.

The usb device itself is really immaterial to the boot mode since that is selected from the bios boot menu when first booting. When I have my systems set (in bios) to allow either csm or uefi boot, the bios boot menu displays the usb device twice. One is clearly marked as uefi boot mode and the other is legacy boot.

How are you actually booting? Just setting the USB as first within the bios boot config then booting with doing nothing else? Using the bios boot menu to select the usb? or something else?

AFAIK there is no easy way to change the partition config of the installation ISO. It seems possible that the bios may not be able to handle a GPT partitioned device if the bios is old enough.

How old is the machine?
Is the firmware (bios) on the motherboard updated to the latest available version?
What brand and model is this machine?

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I think the system is more like 15 years old.

This website
Unified Extensible Firmware Interface - Fedora Project Wiki?

says that Fedora only supports 64 bit UEFI.

What time period did this UEFI only support come in? The article was written in 2024, which was after Fedora 36 which @thunderburger had previously installed.

Core 2 Duo CPUs were releases 2006-2008.

Have you installed the Windows 10 BIOS update?

The first version of this wiki article is from 2012 when UEFI was a new thing, and 2024 was the last edit. Click on “Wiew history” to check that.

Once i had a same system as you please select partition scheme to (MBR) in Rufus.
Screenshot From 2025-01-16 19-11-34
some time these systems take a minute or two to show up screen

  1. Fedora only supports 64 bit kernels since about the release of Fedora 32.
  2. The uefi that fedora supports is only the 64 bit version (which is what you quoted).
  3. That does not say that fedora supports only uefi booting, but rather the uefi can only be 64 bit (and seems related to the fact noted in #1 above.)

There is additional info about making an image that prefers mbr booting at
Unified Extensible Firmware Interface - Fedora Project Wiki?

The same page further down shows info about the choice of MBR or GPT for partitioning for booting. If the bios only supports legacy boot then it likely also only supports MBR partitioning.

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Currently, Fedora will create a GPT partition if installed on an empty disk, also in classical MBR boot mode. The Fedora install media isn’t really hybrid anymore. In the past it was hybrid in the sense that it has bot a DOS partition table as well as a GPT partition table and supposedly also a Apple MAC partition table. This is no longer the case.

The classic BIOS is not supposed to care about file partition table layout; it can only load the first sector of the disk unit and run it. It is possible that the HP Compaq system has a problem there. I don’t know.

Ahh yes, great suggestion regarding flashing the BIOS. Unfortunately that didn’t resolve the issue.

Thanks @computersavvy for the link to that wiki page regarding UEFI - I’ll take a closer look on that…

I was wondering if I could somehow just dd the bootloader and system from the usb drive (after flashed with the live iso) - then clear the partition table and re-create manually and then dd back the data. So basically, making it “MBR only”. But I guess there’s a whole lot more to it which I’m not aware of at this point. Anyway, I guess that’s the only option I got?

I was hoping that at least some of the isos available would have “legacy” support - i.e. the netinstall everything iso, but that one also have the same partition table.

You might try this method with --reset-mbr. Should work with existing iso’s. Just don’t specify --efi.

I had a Phenom II that didn’t like a memstick install image of FreeBSD on a 1TB USB HDD even though it worked perfect on a newer laptop. A netinstall smaller image on a small 16GB USB stick booted fine though.

I’d try a different USB stick and Fedora image.


I see Rufus mentioned and I’d recommend balena’s Etcher instead (I had multiple 4% failed mediachecks from Fedora after burning from Rufus dd mode; not sure what Rufus does differently than Etcher Windows or dd on Linux).

There’s also newer Live images here: Index of /pub/alt/live-respins


I’d also recommend hard-erasing the USB stick to remove any possibility of old boot sectors or partition info (I lightly-formatted a NTFS HDD on Windows and somehow still had ZFS data lying around Gparted saw):

sudo wipefs --all --force '/dev/sdc'
sudo dd if='/dev/zero' of='/dev/sdc' count='1024'

Thanks @vwbusguy , that’s exactly what I need. I didn’t give it a try earlier due to the statement that it’s “slightly less reliable”.

Unfortunately I’m getting:

...
The media check is complete, the result is: PASS.

It is OK to use this media.
Error 1 detected at line 2028 /usr/bin/livecd-iso-to-disk
Error 1 detected at line 2028 /usr/bin/livecd-iso-to-disk

… when executing:
sudo livecd-iso-to-disk --format --reset-mbr ./Fedora-Sway-Live-x86_64-41-1.4.iso /dev/sde

Or any other edition (not just the sway live spin). I’ll try diagnosing the two errors some more later.

I was l checking out the repo on the github page, and it seems somewhat inactive. Maybe it’s because the Fedora mediawriter is the way to go these days? That I also tried earlier btw, as well as Balena Etcher, but they won’t let me specify the partition table, which is what livecd-iso-to-disk will let me do I guess.

Anyway… I did try dumping data from the “official” partitions created when flashing the iso. And then wiping the partition table, create a new one (MBR compatible) and then create the same partitions manually. Now, the USB stick was actually recognized and I’m getting “Grub” as output on the screen when it tries to boot from the media (And nothing else, just “Grub”). So… a little progress, but maybe it’s the wrong path I’m on.

I also looked a bit into lorax and especially livemedia-creator, but that’s not really what I want since I just need the latest release of 41, without having to do much myself… just grabbing the iso, flash it and run+install as usual.

I’ll try that @Espionage724 , thanks for the suggestion. Although it did work fine with kali, so I guess it’s fine. But I’ll give it a try for sure.

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