Solved How to boot from USB flash drive?/HP Spectre x360

[antares]

Hi, so I bought this convertible laptop. It comes with Windows 8.1 in UEFI mode (BIOS setting is Legacy Support disabled and Secure Boot enabled). I want to create an Acronis backup of the entire drive using the Acronis True Image 2015 bootable rescue USB pen drive. I'm unable to boot from this USB drive, it's not even listed in the boot options when I activate the boot menu by pressing ESC+F9 during boot as instructed in the manual. Any hint? It's my first experience with a UEFI computer, so maybe I'm missing something. Thanks.

 

[KYHI]

You MUST disable Secure Boot..
You should also make a HP factory recovery usb/dvd set

 

[antares]

Yes, I made an HP factory recovery usb flash drive using the built in HP software, but I'd like to use the Acronis Trueimage 2015 bootable media recovery USB flash drive to be able to perform full system backups of this laptop as I usually do with my PC. Problem is that even if I disable Secure boot in BIOS, the Acronis USB flash drive won't boot, and I use this same USB flash drive in other systems and I can always boot from it.

Let me give you the facts:
- I have a bootable USB flash drive, in my PC that has Win 8.1x64 when I press F8 during POST the Boot Menu appears and shows the USB flash drive as an option, when I choose it, it boots perfectly fine from it and shows the Acronis menu.
- In my HP Spectrex360 I set the BIOS options as suggested: Secure Boot disabled, Legacy Support enabled and both UEFI and Legacy boot sequence is set with "USB diskette" in 1st place.
- I plugged the bootable USB flash drive in one of the USB ports of the laptop, power it on, press ESC, then press F9 and I'm directed to the Boot Menu. It does not show the USB flash drive as a boot option, it only shows the following: "Boot from EFI file" and "Notebook Hard Drive".
- I tried the above procedure plugging the bootable USB flash drive in all 3 USB ports of the HP Spectre x360 unsuccessfully.

If instead I try this procedure , the USB flash drive will show as "UEFI USB", if I select it, the laptop restarts and in POST it displays a message "Unable to boot from selected device. Press ENTER to continue", when I do so it redirects to the Boot Manager with the above mentioned boot options.

 

[KYHI]

that is the option you need to select to boot ATI > Boot from EFI file < you may have to browse to the usb

 

[antares]

Thanks KYHI, but I tried "boot from EFI file" and when browsing the USB drive was not even there. I have solved the issue by deleting all partitions in the flash drive, formatting and creating the Acronis recovery media again and when plugged in the USB port the laptop boots directly into the Acronis menu as it should, currently performing the full factory system backup so I can later do a fresh Windows install.
Still I don't get why the flash drive was booting fine in my PC but not in the laptop, another mystery lost in the twilight zone.
I will mark this thread as solved even though I have no clue of the latter issue.

 

[abraxas4]

Hello antares,
I had the same problem and I couldn't find the right solution from the Internet, too.
But this is what works to me.
In my case, I had the same problem with situation as follows:
-) hp x360
-) win 8.1 (64bit)
-) In BIOS : legacy enabled, Secure boot disabled
-) In BIOS : USB is the first to boot
-) In BIOS : USB 3.0 : Auto
-) SanDisk 32G USB stick + NTFS format
=> still, you don't see the USB disk in the list when hitting ESC+F9 during boot.

So I tried another USB stick of 16G (manufacturer unknown).
I formatted this with FAT32 this time.

And it worked...
I can see the USB drive in the list.

I don't know what the exact factor yet, but this combination worked to me.
Even the first USB worked with my another laptop.

I left this just in case someone else tries to find a solution...

Thanks