Tried using a bootable USB with Ventoy last weekend and it messed up my whole workflow

I was over at a buddy's shop in Akron helping him reimage a bunch of old Dell Optiplexes that came in from a school district. I figured I'd try out Ventoy since I kept hearing how it lets you store multiple ISOs on one drive. So I set it up, copied over a few Linux distros and a Windows 10 image, and went to boot one of the Dells. It refused to boot from the USB at all. I spent like 45 minutes messing with BIOS settings, secure boot, legacy mode, all that stuff. Finally I just gave up and used a regular Rufus-made stick and it worked first try. Has anyone else had compatibility issues with Ventoy on older hardware like those vintage Optiplexes from around 2012?

2 comments

2 Comments

jessicamiller26d ago

That part about spending 45 minutes in BIOS settings really hit home. I had a similar thing happen with an old HP Pavilion from 2011 where it just would not see the Ventoy drive at all but a regular bootable stick popped right up. Sometimes I think these old motherboards just get confused by the multi-ISO setup and prefer the simple single ISO approach instead.

julia28626d ago

Yeah @jessicamiller don't you think it's funny how old tech just has a mind of its own? I've noticed that with my dad's old desktop, it's like the hardware decides what it wants to work with. Reminds me of how some people won't try new recipes because they're stuck on the same old one they know works.