I just went through the same pain. We just got a few of these in at work and they are a right PITA to wipe and clean-install windows with, especially the usb-3 only ones.To enable booting to a USB device you need to set secure boot to disabled (in the security tab of the bios) and enable CSM (on the boot tab of the bios)You can then select a USB boot device.If you are trying to install windows 7 on a USB3 only zenbook, your next headache will be windows setup failing, from either a bootable USB memory stick or a USB DVD drive. This is because the bios loads the windows boot image, but when the windows setup program starts it doesn't have USB3 drivers and can't read the setup files.To get around this you need to create a customized windows setup, on either a USB memory stick or a DVD. You need to download the USB3 drivers from asus, extract the driver files (from the folder containing the.sys and.inf files) and use dism.exe to load these into a windows boot image. There are tutorials on how to do this on the net, the one I used was here. I hit this same issue. However, if you plug in the USB stick before you boot, the choice will turn up.
If you want to attempt to boot from the USB flash drive, you either have to make it the first option in the list of boot devices (what happens when you press + or - in the 'Boot Device Priority' screen?) or you have to make it the 'first hard drive' so that when the BIOS gets to the third option above, it goes to the USB device. DVD optical drive not showing as boot option in BIOS. On an Asus here the USB DVD does not show in the BIOS but for that machine I have to power on and hold down the Esc key to get a boot menu.
You can then save and boot away.IN THEORY.I tried to boot onto an Ubuntu USB - I see the grub loader but nothing happens after that. But that's a different issue:-)Last note: Once you remove the USB stick, it will disappear from the options.
Next time you want to bot from USB (or a USB DVD, whatever), you'll need to do this again.EDIT 12-12-12: OK, I managed to get this working with Ubuntu. What I needed to do was turn off the 'Secure Boot' option in UEFI/BIOS. Once I did this, it was pretty smooth sailing. Ubuntu installed and all was well with the world once more.This page here: was the best help I found.Note: Disabling secure boot also meant that I had no issues at all getting both a USB and USB CD-ROM to appear in the boot menu on startup (hitting ESC). You do need to have them plugged in on boot (as it happens so fast), but messing around with the boot order as I mentioned previously became unnecessary.As always, YMMV - this worked for me, I hope it helps you. This thread helped me a lot. I'll add my 2 cents:Asus R509C with Windows 8 pre-installed:.
USB device is plugged in. F2 to BIOS. Switch to 'Boot' and set “FastBoot” to Disabled. Switch to 'Security' and set 'Secure Boot Control' to Disabled.
F10 to save and exit and immediately press F2 to BIOS. Only then could I switch to 'Boot' and set “Launch CSM” to Enabled. F10 to save and exit and immediately press F2 to BIOS. Now select a boot option. My USB option didn't say USB, it was just 8.0.7. F10 to save and exit - booted right to USB. Those are not BIOS setup screens, they are UEFI setup screens (which is the successor of BIOS).
I just had this same problem with exactly the same symptoms on an ASUS K56CA that I unboxed yesterday, and boy I am glad I did not come to this thread first. Lots of good advice, but none of it (would have) helped me!Try a different USB stick. I was using a U3 16GB stick that never had problems booting on any BIOS-based computer, and I could never get it to show up reliably in the boot menu.
(Once it appeared in F9 menu, only after I had removed it during boot.)I switched to a 2GB '24x' PNY Attache I had lying around, with no embedded U3 partition, and it showed up immediately when I had any EFI-supporting image copied to it. Unfortunately I still was not able to boot from the USB. (Grub would load, but no love after selecting any choice from the boot menu.)Finally I was able to boot Ubuntu using a DVD media with the same image written to it. The helpful folks in the #ubuntu /freenode IRC channel informed me that you do not need a special image secure-linux-12.10-anyfoo.iso as the Ubuntu guide instructs, just use an up-to-date 12.10 amd64 image and it will have included EFI booting support.For me, after all this, it happily showed up in either F9 or ESC menu for alternate booting. I just got 5 of these for my company and am having the same issues. The first thing I want to do is take a full backup using Acronis Snap Deploy and I cannot boot into the software via USB Thumb Drive, it sees the drive but doesn't boot to it.I also tried hooking up an external Sony DVD drive and it doesn't even see it in the boot options, which is even worse. I called support and they are useless.
Usb Not Listed In Boot Options For Iphone
They guy pulled out a Zenbook and goes 'it works for me!' Wonderful.Next I tried building a Windows 7 Thumb Drive, which the computer notices in the Boot Menu but does not boot to it, goes right into the Asus Windows 8 startup logo. What am I doing wrong? Did you find a resolution to boot to USB? I have BIOS version 214.BTW, all devices and attempts were tried on a Dell Optiplex 980 and successfully booted to the device.