isolinux.bin Missing or Corrupt

At work we have one old Dell 2950. I wanted to boot from a Debian 10 Live ISO to note any hardware compatibility issues. Mostly my concern was the RAID controller. Would the Live ISO see the virtual disk?

Upon booting I was greeted with a typical unhelpful error:

isolinux.bin missing or corrupt

I knew from experience that I could burn the Live ISO image to a DVD and the system would boot without hiccups. Boot with an optical disk? In the 21st century?

Some quick poking around the web found a solution. The USB Flash Drive Emulation needs to be set to Hard Disk rather than Auto. When configured to Auto the BIOS treats the USB device as a floppy disk.

1. Insert the USB stick.
2. Boot into the BIOS.
3. Configure USB sticks as hard disks.
4. Boot into the Dell Boot Menu.
5. Select the USB stick.

Life seldom is straightforward or simple.

Posted: June 25, 2020 Category: Usability Tagged: General

Next: Just Reboot Now Dammit

Previous: Recovering From GRUB Failures