Cannot get rEFInd to properly load on USB without GPT
An EFI boot manager utility
Status: Beta
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I use a utility USB that needs to work on a variety of systems. I primarily use it to load winre and knoppix. To that end it has syslinux 5.10 setup and I was using rEFInd for UEFI systems. Unfortunately, my USB failed and I have been unable to get it to work with the most recent version of rEFInd on my new drive. The new drive is USB 3.0 instead of 2.0 and it is 32GB instead of 16GB.
I download version 0.7.7, copied the refind folder to \EFI\boot, renamed the sample conf to refind.conf, renamed refind_ia32.efi to bootia32.efi and renamed refind_x64 to bootx64.efi.
When I try to boot the system it displays a error message, "Error while (re)opening installation volume" or similar (it's quick) and moves immediately to syslinux. I cannot get the rEFInd menu to load to save my life. The USB image version works but since I frequently work on older systems I cannot use and GPT. The last time I set this up I had zero issues. I am not sure what I did differently the first time.
What am I missing?
Last edit: Joshua Shaw 2014-02-05
My guess is that the issue is USB 3.0 vs. USB 2.0. These two standards often use different controllers and drivers, even at the firmware level, so if your motherboard supports EFI-mode booting from USB 2.0 but not from USB 3.0, the behavior would be much as you describe. I recommend you try another USB drive; or if possible, plug the drive into a port that does not support USB 3.0.