How to select boot device

[vectorx5000]

This is going to sound like a stupid question, but I can't get my USB drive to be a boot device on my PC. I have an MSI X99A Sli plus motherboard. The USB flash drive shows up as a bootable device but I can't actually boot from it. Any help is appreciated. BTW, the flash drive is bootable on this laptop.

[firestronk]

How you gone into the bios and selected it as the top priority boot drive?

[Sportiva]

Is fast boot enabled?

Also is it set to the highest boot priority?

[Gibs960]

Press delete or whatever you press to get into your BIOS and my Mobo BIOS has a drag and drop sort of feature to sort the drives, so just drag the USB to the top or first or whatever!

[vectorx5000]

1 minute ago, PhoenixArising said:

How you gone into the bios and selected it as the top priority boot drive?

Would it be a "UEFI USB Key" or  a "USB Key"?

[Jonny_Wishbone]

2 minutes ago, vectorx5000 said:

Would it be a "UEFI USB Key" or  a "USB Key"?

Well, that depends... As a quick fix, I recommend you put every boot device having "USB" in their name prior to anything you don't want to boot from, i.e. your SSD/HDD. It will skip automatically to subsequent boot devices if a device is not found. Give it a try

[Naeaes]

Whoa, hold your horses! No need to permanently change BIOS settings for a single instance such as OS installation. Navigate to the exit menu (where you'd save and exit) and use the Boot override in there. Here's a picture:

Spoiler

That'll set the device as the first in line for that particular run only and then revert back to what it was. If you prefer to mess with your boot orders, you need to change it back during the installation. Otherwise the installation will just start again on every boot. I'm pretty sure there's a hotkey like F9 or F11 for the override too but I can't remember which exactly it is.

 

You should pick 'UEFI USB' instead of 'Legacy USB' or whatever to get a full-fledged UEFI installation with the fast boots and whatnot.

[Jonny_Wishbone]

21 minutes ago, Naeaes said:

Whoa, hold your horses! No need to permanently change BIOS settings for a single instance such as OS installation. Navigate to the exit menu (where you'd save and exit) and use the Boot override in there. Here's a picture:

  Reveal hidden contents

That'll set the device as the first in line for that particular run only and then revert back to what it was. If you prefer to mess with your boot orders, you need to change it back during the installation. Otherwise the installation will just start again on every boot. I'm pretty sure there's a hotkey like F9 or F11 for the override too but I can't remember which exactly it is.

 

You should pick 'UEFI USB' instead of 'Legacy USB' or whatever to get a full-fledged UEFI installation with the fast boots and whatnot.

That's the best option indeed.

One thing: Back in the days you had to press a key to enter a let's say windows installation, right?! If you hold your hands still you get forwarded to 2nd boot priority (e.g. SSD)  - so I don't see the issue with changing boot priority during OS installation or beeing trapped in an infinite loop of OS installations starting over again.