Solved Unable to Install FreeBSD on HP 17-by3065st 17.3" Notebook

Bought the laptop from here when it was on sale:


It doesn't recognize the USB i have plugged in. I can try a DVD however that isn't practical for what I'm looking to do. I'm trying to add more hardware support to my custom FreeBSD install that is meant to boot from USB (you might have seen the topic for that)...

In particular, the FreeBSD 12.1-RELEASE memstick image isn't recognized as bootable at all in the OS selection. It's not even listed. However I made a custom install on a different machine and wrote it to a USB while the machine did indicate the USB was recognized in the OS selection it didn't allow me to boot into it throwing an error. (will provide the error as needed).

It uses UEFI for the boot and not Legacy BIOS in case you were wondering. My Mac Mini which is also UEFI is able to recogize and boot from the USB but not the HP Notebook.

I'll provide more details as needed, and a huge thank you to everyone in this community for being such a huge help thus far. If you want special mention in the credits for helping me with my "distro" (using that term loosely) let me know how you want me to go about doing that, whether a readme, special thanks or welcome screen in the OS itself.

Samuel
 

2 SuperSpeed USB Type-A 5Gbps signaling rate; 1 USB 2.0 Type-A; 1 RJ-45; 1 AC smart pin; 1 HDMI 1.4b; 1 headphone/microphone combo

Sounds like an issue with configuration in UEFI. I'm sure you've tried already but, try the the USB 2 port and not the USB3 ports. As suggested, you may also want to check over the UEFI / BIOS settings in case there are some settings restricting USB boot options.
 
Thanks freeBSDn for the better link. This isn't an issue with Linux as I have KDE neon as the default OS to boot into, and I installed it from a flash drive. I have tried disabling Secure Boot before I made this thread and no luck.

The error I'm getting when I select my custom FreeBSD usb install says:
"Selected boot image did not Authenticate. Press <Enter> to continue."

And of course hitting Enter just takes me into KDE neon because the FreeBSD boot image didn't authenticate. Whatever that means, I don't really know. Sounds like an error you'd get with Secure Boot enabled or booting from usb disabled, but I made sure neither was the case.
 
If the only thing you're running is Linux, it may be worth trying to boot in legacy rather than Uefi. (I think if you have Windows, you have to use Uefi, but I don't have anything with Windows.)
As you said, I would have thought secure boot, judging from the error. You do mention this was a custom image. Does it work with a standard FreeBSD install image? For what it's worth, my T495 Ryzen works fine with FreeBSD and Uefi. 12.2-RELEASE has trouble with the graphics, so I use CURRENT right now, but as far as installing, I had no trouble with 12.2 or CURRENT
 
If the only thing you're running is Linux, it may be worth trying to boot in legacy rather than Uefi. (I think if you have Windows, you have to use Uefi, but I don't have anything with Windows.)
As you said, I would have thought secure boot, judging from the error. You do mention this was a custom image. Does it work with a standard FreeBSD install image? For what it's worth, my T495 Ryzen works fine with FreeBSD and Uefi. 12.2-RELEASE has trouble with the graphics, so I use CURRENT right now, but as far as installing, I had no trouble with 12.2 or CURRENT
I've tried the standard 12.1-RELEASE image from the download page and that one isn't even visible in the boot selection. I have linux as the default, but also have windows in a dual boot. I wasn't looking to install FreeBSD on this laptop, just having it boot from a usb would be good enough for what I need. The next thing I could perhaps try is upgrading the custom image to 12.2-RELEASE as well as download 12.2-RELEASE fresh by itself and see if either improve the situation.
 
I would have thought (though never tested) standard 12.1 release should work too. As you can do the whole thing in a few minutes, it *might* be worth making plain 12.2 install, or even a mini install, and maybe even one with CURRENT, just to see if it will be seen. But not having run into this, I'm sorry, I don't have any intelligent suggestions, just wild guesses that you've probably tried already.
 
Turns out there was an extra step involved to turning secure boot off that I didn't notice at first. Now that I actually have secure boot turned off for real this time, everything is working. Thanks guys!
 
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