Hi all, I’ve just bought a new Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3 15AMN8. It came with Windows 11 installed. I never registered the device or created an account with Windows. I am having trouble installing Fedora.
I used Fedora Media Writer to put F42 on to a flash drive.
I’ve disabled secure boot, enabled booting from USB, and set the boot order to put ‘USB HDD’ above ‘Windows Boot Manager’.
But when I exit the Boot options, with the boot order saved, the laptop always now goes to a black screen which says “This user can’t sign in because this account is currently disabled” and an “OK” button. Pressing that takes me to a Windows login screen for “defaultuser0”, which I do not know how to do anything with except shut down.
(It does not seem to recognise the USB stick, though, on one early attempt on start up it did get as far as a GRUB menu. Unfortunately, after many attempts, I’ve not been able to recreate getting in to that menu.)
Have looked at posts with similar symptoms but could not find a solution so far and have run out of ideas. I’m still fairly new to linux. I would be very grateful for help and suggestions
The actual function key to press may be different on different systems. Check your user manual to see what to use on your system. Sometimes if there isn’t a specific key for this, go into your BIOS settings using the appropriate key and sometimes there is a menu that allows you to select a device to boot from. It’s often called a One Time Boot menu or something like this. This is different from changing the boot order (which should also work), it just allows you to temporarily boot from a different drive than normal.
Indeed, on a lower-spec Lenovo I have around, the key to access the UEFI boot menu is F11 (meaning Fn+F11 has to be pressed). I would advise trying any of the high-number function keys (F8 to F12).
Hi, thanks. Both F2 and F12 take me to boot options on the device when it’s starting up. I’ve been unable to find a One Time Boot or a way to make the device boot from the USB stick. It always goes on to Windows.
Do I need to set up the laptop in Windows first? I had hoped to avoid doing this and have not given Windows access to my wifi which it says it needs to do.
No, you don’t need to set up Windows to be able to boot and install Fedora from USB. Can you share the section from your laptop manual that describes the function keys? It seems like either you’re not selecting the right boot drive or that the USB with Fedora wasn’t created correctly. If you are putting the right drive first in the boot order, then if it can’t boot from that drive then it will just move on and try the next drive which is likely why you’re getting that Windows error. It’s apparently booting Windows not Fedora. You might want to try erasing your USB flash drive you put the Fedora install on and try creating it again. If there is an option to have it verify it was written correctly do that too. Or do you have another USB flash drive you could try? You could also try different tools to create your Fedora install flash drive. Besides Fedora Media Writer, I believe Rufus (Rufus - Create bootable USB drives the easy way) is another possibility. However, my favorite method is Ventoy (https://www.ventoy.net/en/index.html). It allows you to create a bootable USB and you can copy as many ISOs as you want so you can boot the installers for anything you want to install or boot the live version such as Fedora, Windows, CloneZilla, various utility ISOs, etc.
Just to throw in more confusion, my lower-spec, older Lenovo (Yoga 6) system boots to the UEFI Boot Manager using F12 without the Fn augmentation. Booting into the BIOS menu on my system is done by holding down the F2 key at power on time; again, without the Fn key. This Fn key augmentation might’ve been an option setting in the BIOS itself, I don’t recall.
Also, you should not have had to toggle Secure Boot off to boot the Fedora live system ISO at install time.
Hi, thank you for your thoughtful replies. That’s reassuring about not needing to set up Windows first.
The manual gives various options for editing boot options. I’ve quoted the relevant sections below.
Open the UEFI/BIOS setup utility
Turn on or restart the computer.
Before the Lenovo logo appears on the screen, press F2 repeatedly.
Note: For computers with hotkey mode enabled, press Fn + F2.
Select boot devices
Turn on or restart the computer.
Press F12.
From the boot device menu, select a boot device to start the computer.
The Novo Button menu
[…]The Novo Button menu can be displayed before the operating system starts. From the menu, you can choose to
Open the BIOS/UEFI setup utility
Open the boot device selection menu
[…]
Note: Alternatively, turn off the computer. Press Fn and the power button to open the Novo Button menu.
I’ve used the UEFI menus to select USB HDD boot by the ordering but it always seems to move on to Windows.
The Fedora Media Writer did output the results of its checks, which said that all was fine with the USB stick. I’ve rewritten it a couple of times to the USB stick, which should have wiped the stick first, but the laptop’s booting behaved the same.
I’ll pop out and get a new USB stick and try that. If that doesn’t work, then I’ll give Rufus or Ventoy a go.
I’ve seen some new systems that boot right into Windows Setup . I assume this is like hybernation aka “fastboot”. Windows 11 had a dual boot bug that was only recently fixed. Many vendors provide Windows installers for use recovering from a failed system drive, so I would check with Lenovo for one that avoids the bug. You could move the drive to an external USB case and wipe the drive from another system so you are installing to an unformatted drive.
Edit: some users just remove the original drive and save it for the time they will resell the system and install a new drive for use with Linux.
From my experience, you don’t need to press the F2 key repeatedly, just press and hold it immediately have pressing the power button to turn on your computer until the BIOS menu pops up.
Also, I just double-checked my system BIOS menu settings and learned that
(1) The hotkey mode is a setting in the BIOS Settings submenu; I left/set mine to Disabled, which, as you pointed out, is why I don’t need the Fn-F2 or the Fn-F12 combos at boot time;
(2) In the Boot submenu on my system is a setting to Enable/Disable USB Boot. You might want to re-check this on your system to ensure it’s set to Enable on your system;
(3) The Secure Boot setting, which is a setting in the BIOS Security submenu can be set to Enable; it’s definitely not what the problem is here.
I’ll also be very surprised if other boot USB creator programs are needed. Fedora Media Writer has always worked fine for booting one ISO. I don’t know this for a fact, but since the ISO file format for the file it places on the USB drive is ISO 9660, it may be making whatever is on the USB disk mimic a CD-ROM. It’s been super reliable for me on my Yoga 6.
IIRC, that bug threw an error that contained a message with the phrase ‘Verifying shim SBAT data failed’. So it was at least getting to the stage of trying to boot the second OS.
But I also recall having to disable the “fastboot” option from my Windows OS settings as you suggested. It may be that you have to do that after every Windows update.
Another thing you might want to try is putting your USB stick in another computer. If you are able to boot it there then it means it’s something with your laptop not the USB stick. If it boots, you should be running the live version of Fedora so you can try it out without installing it.
Hello all, thank you very much for your advice and moral support!
Removing the drive is a bit beyond my abilities but it’s good to know that it’s possible to do such things. (It’s a good point about leaving Windows on in case of selling on later… maybe I was slightly rash to wipe the whole hard drive but never mind now.)
It seems that it was the USB stick that was defective. (Strange as it had worked for me installing Fedora on two machines before. But they were older models and the USB stick is 2.0 whereas the flash drive that I just bought today is 3.0. Maybe that explains it; I don’t know.)
I had no problems using Fedora Media Writer and the new USB stick to install Fedora 42 on my new laptop. I am pleased to say that it’s now running happily with F42 on the hard drive.