Dell Venue 8 Pro, boot to USB

I want to boot from USB as well, I even had a UEFI operating system Ubuntu on the USB drive and it won't boot.

We should be allowed to boot from USB, hopefully some one can figure it out. Thanks.

I worked on getting windows 7 32bit to boot all day, I tried some with windows 7 64bit but stopped because dell has no 64bit drivers for the venue 8 pro. There is no use trying to install windows 7 so don't even try. It is clear this device is made for windows 8 32bit only. If some one can even get Linux to boot I will be shocked, I've had zero luck. Some one prove me wrong? :emotion-15:

You may need to format the USB as GPT not MSDOS.  Then Create the EXT4 partition.  Then use the USB utility to make a bootable Ubuntu system.

I have to agree with Jason, I think your going to find it's Windows 8 32bit only.

I'm unaware of any way to launch Ubuntu in 32bit UEFI and even if you could I have a feeling the Atom is made for Windows only.

I was able to find a third party program that can boot the system but only because it uses the Windows 8 recovery enviroment to boot.  Thanks to my friend Brian_K for helping me with it.  http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/howto/tbwinre_tutorial.htm

So at least I can image the system and boot to a USB to restore it without using the Dell factory image restore that I could not figure out how to use from a USB drive.  I created the option to create the factory restore onto a USB drive and the USB drive did indeed boot the system but the first box that came up says "the system must be plugged into a power source for a recovery".  Thats where I hit a dead end, if I unplug the flash dive to connect the power it will not continue (of course), if I don't plug it in then the recovery will not contine.  Glad I tried it, thank god I wasn't depending on it.

One interesting thing is that after creating the factory recovery onto a USB, it's setup like a windows 8 installation disk.  The Sources\Boot.wim file can be switched with another .wim file and the flash drive will boot it.  I replaced it with a PE2.0 wim file from another boot CD (Ghost 15) and it started the program but I got stuck because the touch pad did not work on the first screen to accept the license agreement.  I have not had time to play around with it but a PE4.0 wim file may work fine although I don't see any benifit of booting Windows 8 to go on a Windows 8 system.

I'm also disappointed that the SD card is not listed as a bootable device, it would save me from having to use an external flash drive and the SD card is always with the system.   On all my other laptops I make the SD card bootable with grub4dos and have several ISO's, recovery disks, and Linix distros I can boot to.

Oh well, at least I can image it and recover it now.

Dave

I'm going to try and boot from the windows 7 DVD and Ubuntu DVD from an external DVD drive I have, I'm waiting on a USB cable that powers the DVD drive though from eBay, if it boots from DVDs that will be good, may be it just docent like USB flash drives. I'll let you know if it works when I get the cable and try it out, wish me luck. :emotion-14:

I heard even if you get to boot, dell doesn't provide the drivers for the touch screen - so you have to control the OS with mouse and keyboard.

My Win partition got corrupted and I can't boot into windows. so I am in the same boat, trying to figure out how to get the recovery partition to boot and restore the dell Win8 32bit

I booted Fedora 17 but it would not load the GUI. I found out this device only supports a 32-Bit Uefi operating system, Linux currently won't support 32-Bit Uefi so were stuck with Windows 8 32-Bit Operating system. Request dell to add a legacy boot mode to the Uefi bios, I did, that will allow us to boot any operating system from USB. Lets all ask dell to add legacy boot mode to the Uefi bios, they might just listen.

You really can't boot a 64-Bit operating system on the Dell Venue 8 Pro, you can only boot a 32-Bit Uefi operating system, so you can't run windows 7 32-Bit because it does not support Uefi and you can't run windows 7 64-Bit because it only supports 32-Bit with Uefi support. If we had legacy boot mode to enable then yes I think we could boot any operating system installer 32-Bit or 64-Bit, keep asking dell for it in the forums and they may just decide to give us legacy boot mode in a bios update, the more users ask the more likely they will listen.

I forgot to add, no you cannot run windows 8 or 8.1 64-Bit on this device, unless dell gives us legacy boot mode option in a bios update.

I was able to find a third party program that can boot the system but only because it uses the Windows 8 recovery enviroment to boot.  Thanks to my friend Brian_K for helping me with it.  http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/howto/tbwinre_tutorial.htm I created the option to create the factory restore onto a USB drive and the USB drive did indeed boot the system but the first box that came up says "the system must be plugged into a power source for a recovery".  Thats where I hit a dead end. One interesting thing is I got stuck because the touch pad did not work on the first screen to accept the license agreement. I'm also disappointed that the SD card is not listed as a bootable device. Oh well, at least I can image it and recover it now.

1. Could you do a breakdown of what you did where its specific to the Venue 8?
2. Could we not just use a micro y cable - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Micro-Cable-Power-Samsung-I9100/dp/B00B5T42T0/ref=pd_sim_computers_1 ...?
3. Would it not be possible to insert the CD key into the installer like you can with Win7? or change the type so it dosent ask for the key during install (eg the full version of 8.1 I just installed on my laptop didnt ask for the key)
4. that is quite literately a bunch of <ADMIN NOTE: Substitute character removed as per TOU> on Dell's part and I expect them to fix that in a bios update. @Dell if not why not..?
5. See question 1.

How can we request that Dell update the bios to allow usb boot without power and allow legacy boot.  Could someone with Dell pop in please.  Or else a lot of Dell 8s are going to be coming back.

Having issues understanding the big want for Win x64 on either of the Venue Atom based machines.  These machines only have 2GB of memory so any enhancements to memory would be lost as you need to go above 4GB to see any benefit.

I installed a VM of Ubuntu 12.04 (32 bit) using VMware Player.   It stinks to share 2 GB or RAM, but it works...

2.   Could we not just use a micro y cable - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Micro-Cable-Power-Samsung-I9100/dp/B00B5T42T0/ref=pd_sim_computers_1  ...?

   If you look closely at that cable it's Y'd at the USB A female end.  This is designed to provide power to devices that require more than what the host device provides, or for hosts that would be OTG compatible other than providing no power.

   It's my understanding that most devices turn off the charging circuit when an OTG cable is plugged in, preventing charging even if power is present.

   There is some hope as I understand it the limit on charging while using OTG may be a firmware limit and not a hardware limit.  Some Android users have had success with custom roms enabling OTG use and charging.

   Perhaps this device already is able to accept charge while using OTG (fingers crossed), or if not hopefully will in the near future.

   I'm going to pick one of these cables up hoping it'll work.