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I’m posting this hopes of helping people who google this, because I just spent two fucking hours finding it out. Here goes:

If you have a Via Epia M (EpiaM, Epia-M) motherboard in your barebone computer, and you want to boot from a USB Stick or USB Hard Drive, you have to know three things:

  1. In the Bios, set the boot device to USB-ZIP
  2. Also in the Bios, activate the USB-Keyboard option
  3. Finally, before you plug in either a USB keyboard or your USB drive, remove the power chord of your barebone computer! Don’t just turn it off; in order for the Epia M to recognize a USB drive or keyboard, you have to completely cut its power before you plug either of these in.

Those were infuriating two hours yesterday evening! HTH

In the next days, I’m going to post my experiences and maybe even a HOWTO on creating a software RAID on Linux.

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  1. alf (Reply) on Mittwoch 3, 2007

    Thank you so much. I was going crazy with this one.

  2. Andreas Percher (Reply) on Mittwoch 3, 2007

    This looks good, but didn’t work with my EPIA ML 6000 EAG LVDS board.
    Using a TrekStore 1GB Stick with Knoppix 5.1 on it.

  3. Andreas Percher (Reply) on Mittwoch 3, 2007

    Thank You,
    Now It works:
    USB-Keyboard OFF, Bootdrive USB-HDD.
    Booting works only if the power chord is removed.

  4. baer (Reply) on Mittwoch 3, 2007

    thank you… i needed more than 2 hours ;)

  5. Richard A (Reply) on Mittwoch 3, 2007

    I have an EPIA-M. I concurr with Andreas, removing power entirely is the solution. Otherwise you can change all the options in the world and it won’t make a difference.

    So to recap, for you to be able to boot from USB-CD USB-DVD and any other USB attached device, you MUST remove power (unplug the darn thing).

  6. Roger (Reply) on Mittwoch 3, 2007

    Wow, I can’t believe THAT was the problem. I had all the bios settings right and it didn’t work. I found your page, unplugged the power and IT WORKED. Thanks so much, it really helped a lot.

  7. Samuel (Reply) on Mittwoch 3, 2007

    I cannt belive that it worked, which has troubled me for weeks. Greate thanks for your execllent work, Awesome guy.

  8. Frood (Reply) on Mittwoch 3, 2007

    This hint is very very useful! I was going crazy, no wake on lan, power on keyboard was working! I spent hours to find out whats wrong.
    THANKS!!!

  9. decodix (Reply) on Mittwoch 3, 2007

    THANK YOU very much!! I spent an hour to get this working – no change. Then i asked Dr. Google and here i am, it’s working now!

  10. Laura (Reply) on Mittwoch 3, 2007

    Thank god for google. My frigging hubby was bitching about this stupid thing being “another hunk of crap”. I wanted to smash it!!! Thank you!!

  11. Tom (Reply) on Mittwoch 3, 2007

    Thank you! Saved me a lot of heartache!

  12. Greg (Reply) on Mittwoch 3, 2007

    thank you SO Much! I can’t believe i’m even trying to still use a EPIA-M. There are a lot of better ones out there these days …