How do I get my SP315 to boot from USB?

I am trying to install Ubuntu on my Spin 3 because of excessive phantoms on my touch screen with W10. Acer says Microsoft. Microsoft says Acer. A Spin without a touch screen is worthless to me. Whether or not they persist under Ubuntu will determine the culprit. But I cannot get an EFI enabled USB drive to be seen in the boot list. I tried Legacy mode but nothing at all is bootable. Windows loader is last in my UEFI boot list with USB Disk, CD, FDD first followed by my hard drives. Using DiskPart I created an EFI partition but it defaulted to the entire USB disk which won't allow me to copy the ISO image to it. So I created a FAT32 partition for the ISO slightly smaller than the total space then created an EFI from the remaining. I've done this many times on other laptops but this one has cost me many hours of frustration. Does the EFI partition have to be first? Any ideas how I can get the USB drive included in the list of bootable devices?

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Kamalika

Hi Olbob,
If after following the steps above you still don't see the usb drive in bootable device, please try to update the BIOS firmware and check. This may help.

JackE

The USB stick must be GPT-partitioned FAT32-formatted for the Ubunti iso using Rufus. Then follow these steps to install Ubuntu alongside Windows. Jack E/NJ

( 0) Pre-shrink Windows partition to desired unallocated space for Linux installation.
( 1) Make bootable GPT/FAT32(default) stick from the Linux installation iso with Rufus.
( 2) Set BIOS supervisor password(SECURITY), disable secure boot(BOOT)& enable F12 Windows boot mgr (MAIN). Save BIOS settings & exit. May not be needed with some Linux installations like Mint.
( 3) Shutdown & insert bootable Linux stick
( 4) Turn back on while immediately tapping F12. Select Linux stick to run.
( 5) Preferrably select a default Linux install option
( 6) Follow on-screen instructions to install alongside Windows.
( 7) Let Linux automatically set & resize partitions for Linux & its swap. Adjust for more or less space only if absolutely necessary.
( 8) Shutdown & remove Linux stick.
( 9) Turn back on while tapping F2.
(10) Re-enable secure boot(BOOT) & select UEFI file as trusted(MAIN). Select HDD0, SSD0 or eMMC0, then <EFI>, then <ubuntu>, then grubx64.efi the UEFI file. Enter grubx64.efi in the space provided if selecting it doesn't automatically enter it. Save BIOS setting and exit.
(11) Boot into Windows. Then shutdown again.
(12) Turn back on while tapping F12.
(13) If desired, put grubx64.efi ahead of Windows boot manager in UEFI bootstrapper

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