Randymanme
June 15th, 2020, 06:07 AM
I recently purchased a second-hand HP Z400 Workstation: Xenon 3680 Hexcore 3.33 GHz, 24 GB ram 2 TB hdd, with Windows 10 installed. My intentions are to Tri-boot Windows 10, Ubuntu 18.04, and Deepin 20/beta; however, the computer will not boot the Linux OSes, nor any Linux live DVD from DVD drive or USB -- (so far, I've tried Ubuntu, 18.04 and 20.04, Linux Mint 19.3, RescueSystemCD, and Deepin 20/beta).
I've googled this problem every day for over a week and have gotten either no usable advice or suggestions that I don't have the technical expertise to try to implement. (And, by the way, the gentleman whom I bought the HP Z400 from doesn’t have the technical expertise to help me either – he did tell me that should I decide the put it back on Craigslist, I shouldn’t have any problems finding a buyer as he’s gotten plenty of calls from prospective buyers even after I bought it).
At this point, I strongly suspect that this problem may be rooted in a RAID configuration. I want to include some photos and screenshots from my monitor. Regarding changes I thought I could possibly I make in the BIOS, I found directions to disable SecureBoot and enable Legacy Boot, but the BIOS on this particular Z400 doesn’t include those options. So I thought about updating the BIOS, but found at https://support.hp.com/us-en/warrant...69?sku=FM080UT (https://support.hp.com/us-en/warrantyresult/hp-z400-workstation/3718668/model/3718669?sku=FM080UT) that the End-Of-Life for support for my computer has already happened. Someone at HP Customer Forum says that even though it’s past E-o-L the Z400’s BIOS can still be upgraded, but don’t try it with Windows 10 because Windows 10 didn’t come out until after the Z400’s E-o-L.
I’ve noted that HP did support RHEL and SLED for the Z400, but in both cases, that support required special installer disks that did not include the actual RHEL or SLED operating systems. (I presume I can still download the installer disks from HP; and as far as the actual operating systems go, I wonder if Fedora or CentOS will do instead of RHEL and/or if OpenSuse or Tumbleweed would suffice instead of SLED?) And I’m only assuming that if I could get any Linux operating system installed on my Z400, then others could follow without ado.
Perhaps the photos and screenshots bear some explaining.
At some point, it occurred to me that maybe this might be a PBKC situation; therefore maybe a viable solution might be for me to get up and do something. So I turned off the computer, got up and switched harddrives between my new computer: HP Z400 Workstation, Xeon 3680 hexcore 3.33 GHz, 2TB hdd; Windows 10; and my old computer: Optiplex 960, Intel Core2 Duo, 3.0 GHz, 6 GB ram; Ultimate Edition Oz Unity Star Sapphire (discontinued Ubuntu 14.04 remix upgraded to a 16.04 base); Linux Mint 19.3 Tricia/Mate. So now, my current setup is reflected in my signature (see below). ROM messages that displayed on the monitor during boot up, I took pictures of with my smartphone.
Since the 2TB hdd does boot on the Optiplex 960, I installed Ubuntu 18.04/Mate onto it using the installer option to install alongside of Windows 10; and then from there, used Ubuntu’s Gparted (Gnome Partition Editor) package to resize the Windows partition for space to install Deepin 20/beta. With the 160 GB hdd that I took out of the Optiplex 960 now in the Z400, while Linux Mint 19.3 doesn’t boot, Ultimate Edition Oz Unity Star Sapphire does.
So Let my sum up my question. How can I get the HP Z400 to boot the Linux operating systems after I put the 2TB hdd back in?
I've googled this problem every day for over a week and have gotten either no usable advice or suggestions that I don't have the technical expertise to try to implement. (And, by the way, the gentleman whom I bought the HP Z400 from doesn’t have the technical expertise to help me either – he did tell me that should I decide the put it back on Craigslist, I shouldn’t have any problems finding a buyer as he’s gotten plenty of calls from prospective buyers even after I bought it).
At this point, I strongly suspect that this problem may be rooted in a RAID configuration. I want to include some photos and screenshots from my monitor. Regarding changes I thought I could possibly I make in the BIOS, I found directions to disable SecureBoot and enable Legacy Boot, but the BIOS on this particular Z400 doesn’t include those options. So I thought about updating the BIOS, but found at https://support.hp.com/us-en/warrant...69?sku=FM080UT (https://support.hp.com/us-en/warrantyresult/hp-z400-workstation/3718668/model/3718669?sku=FM080UT) that the End-Of-Life for support for my computer has already happened. Someone at HP Customer Forum says that even though it’s past E-o-L the Z400’s BIOS can still be upgraded, but don’t try it with Windows 10 because Windows 10 didn’t come out until after the Z400’s E-o-L.
I’ve noted that HP did support RHEL and SLED for the Z400, but in both cases, that support required special installer disks that did not include the actual RHEL or SLED operating systems. (I presume I can still download the installer disks from HP; and as far as the actual operating systems go, I wonder if Fedora or CentOS will do instead of RHEL and/or if OpenSuse or Tumbleweed would suffice instead of SLED?) And I’m only assuming that if I could get any Linux operating system installed on my Z400, then others could follow without ado.
Perhaps the photos and screenshots bear some explaining.
At some point, it occurred to me that maybe this might be a PBKC situation; therefore maybe a viable solution might be for me to get up and do something. So I turned off the computer, got up and switched harddrives between my new computer: HP Z400 Workstation, Xeon 3680 hexcore 3.33 GHz, 2TB hdd; Windows 10; and my old computer: Optiplex 960, Intel Core2 Duo, 3.0 GHz, 6 GB ram; Ultimate Edition Oz Unity Star Sapphire (discontinued Ubuntu 14.04 remix upgraded to a 16.04 base); Linux Mint 19.3 Tricia/Mate. So now, my current setup is reflected in my signature (see below). ROM messages that displayed on the monitor during boot up, I took pictures of with my smartphone.
Since the 2TB hdd does boot on the Optiplex 960, I installed Ubuntu 18.04/Mate onto it using the installer option to install alongside of Windows 10; and then from there, used Ubuntu’s Gparted (Gnome Partition Editor) package to resize the Windows partition for space to install Deepin 20/beta. With the 160 GB hdd that I took out of the Optiplex 960 now in the Z400, while Linux Mint 19.3 doesn’t boot, Ultimate Edition Oz Unity Star Sapphire does.
So Let my sum up my question. How can I get the HP Z400 to boot the Linux operating systems after I put the 2TB hdd back in?