Chezzy I always use Gnome Disks to create a USB Stick

At that point I will politely bow out. My experience covers Rufus, Ventoy and Etcher and a few others but have never tried Gnome Disks to create a bootable boot image. I do know that there are lots of different ways of creating bootable ISOs that require continual updates to the software that supports using a USB as boot device.
I have used Ventoy for a number of years now and have had no issues installing many different operating systems including all versions of Solus 4.4 on various computers of widely different age and manufacture.
I politely suggest that it might be worth checking when Gnome Disks was last updated or trying a different software before condemning the Solus ISOs as faulty.

      BuzzPCSOS

      I'm not condemning Solus as faulty in the slightest. I'm using it now, and intend on continuing to use it so long as it stays around, I did use it a couple of years ago. I'm just saying that maybe there is an issue. There is an infinite number of hardware configurations that could cause the problem, and at the same time there could be an issue with the way the ISO was made. It's just another possibility, as there are other threads on here where people have had issues. Leave no stone un-turned as they say.

      gnome-disk-utility 44.0 - Fri, 17 Mar 2023

      It's part of the Gnome Desktop Environment. And I run Fedora, which is basically the test arena for Red Hat, which is not known for outdated packages.

      I wasn't trying to upset anyone.

          I have installed the latest Solus 4.4 on 3 different machines without any problem, i dont think there is anything wrong with the ISO.

          murbert This is what I would recommend

          concur completely. give solus the whole thing and work in the other distros later.

            Chezzy For what it's worth installing Solus as a non-legacy OS should provide you with a slightly speedier and a more secure system , experimenting with an alternative bootable USB software could well be worth the effort for that reason alone. Also remember that secure boot can be left enabled when installing Solus 4.4 .

              Ok I have now tried a fresh download on a different machine, a diffrent usb stick, Gnome Disks, Etcher and Ventoy and have made a post on Jason5's Thread (https://discuss.getsol.us/d/9630-writing-iso-to-usb-no-boot) as none of this is helping JanetLox.

              Who I now realise has a completley different problem in that she can't actually access her machine. If you are still following this thread, have you tried completly powering the machine down, removing external power cables along with the battery. Then press the power button a couple of times before leaving it to sit for 10 minutes or so to try and drain any excess power from the system. Then reassemble it. I am presuming it this model

              Sorry for making a mess of your thread.

              Thank you all for your suggestions and advice. It is much appreciated!
              You are so right Chezzy, that is exactly my problem. I cannot boot into anything and nor can I access the alternative boot device option menu ( Start > Esc > F9) which used to work perfectly.
              I have tried powering down, taking the battery out and drain any possible remnant power by pressing "start" repeatedly and leaving it sit like that for more than 30min.. Powering up after that, with or without the battery resulted in ...no difference.
              Incidentally, the installation effort using the Ventoy USB which worked well beforehand, seems to have been corrupted in some way because it now behaves very erratically when running it from my main Dell Inspiron desktop (Windows).
              Other live USB distro's seem OK.
              I have a docking station setup where I can use (old) HDD's for backups and whatever purpose I choose, and I think I am going to install Solus Plasma on one of them just to see how it behaves then. I will let you know when done!
              In the mean time I would desperately like to get that laptop going again should any suggestions occur :-)
              Thank also for the video. That was spot on!

              By the way, not that it matters, but I am a boy.
              Jan in janetlox is my real name and not an abbreviation of Janet which is after all a very logical deduction.

                janetlox Jan in janetlox is my real name and not an abbreviation of Janet which is after all a very logical deduction.

                Interesting. I could also be an abbreviation of Janus, the Roman god of beginnings.

                I'm still trying to figure out whether you folks who are trying to get UEFI working are in fact preparing your disks correctly. Are you actually creating a boot partition as I mentioned? If not, Solus will only do a legacy installation. If it identifies a FAT32 partition with the boot flag set, only then will it install using EFI. That partition is where it puts the EFI data. So far I haven't seen a confirmation that you're preparing your disks that way.

                Here's what that looks like in GPartEd, from my Solus Budgie virtual machine. The swap partition is optional, but I like all my VMs to be able to hibernate. Saves time when I restart one, by continuing the previous session.

                    H

                    janetlox

                    Sorry about that. That'll teach me not to make assumptions about someones forum name in future.

                    What happens when you switch on your laptop exactly, does it throw any error message or anything.

                    Also what happens if you continually tap the F10 as soon as you power it on?

                      WetGeek Here's what that looks like in GPartEd, from my Solus Budgie virtual machine.

                      By the way, if you do set up a swap partition, it's best to make it at least the size of the RAM in the machine. In this case, the VMs all have 4 GB of RAM, so I create the swap partitions to be 6 GiB in size. That allows this VM to hibernate even if some of the swap is already in use when I tell it to do that.

                      Having prepared your disk in advance, when you run the installer just choose the option that allows you to select mount points for your partitions. Mount the swap partition as swap, and the root partition as /. The EFI partition doesn't need to be mounted. The installer will find it and install the bootloader there.

                        Hi again everyone; sorry about the delay and the sloppy haphazard way I am conducting this thread.
                        I promised feedback on the docked external HDD installation. That went as one would expect; no abnormalities noticed. As on the laptop I first installed Manjaro and then proceeded to install Solus Plasma next to it allowing both OS's roughly half of the disk space (250GB each). I then proceeded to re-install Solus from the same live ISO USB, but utilizing the entire disk this time... no problems. Then I re-installed Manjaro as before, but now replacing Solus, and again: no problem.
                        Back to the laptop, here is a summary of what happens trying to start up:
                        1.Power Button by itself gives the hp splash screen with a notification at the bottom:
                        "Press the ESC key for Startup Menu"

                        1. Power Button > ESC gives the hp splash screen with a notification at the bottom:
                          "ESC ... Pause Startup"

                        2. Power Button > F1 gives the hp splash screen with a notification at the bottom:
                          "F1 ... System Information"

                        3. Power Button > F2 gives the hp splash screen with a notification at the bottom:
                          "F2 ... Startup Check"

                        4. Power Button > F3 through F8 gives the hp splash screen with a notification at the bottom:
                          "Press the ESC key for Startup Menu"

                        5. Power Button > F9 gives the hp splash screen with a notification at the bottom:
                          "F9 ... Change Boot Device Order"

                        6. Power Button > F10 gives the hp splash screen with a notification at the bottom:
                          "F10 ... BIOS Setup Options"

                        7. Power Button > F11 gives the hp splash screen with a notification at the bottom:
                          "F11 ... System Recovery"

                        8. Power Button > F12 gives the hp splash screen with a notification at the bottom:
                          "Press the ESC key for Startup Menu"

                        None of the above result in any further action, choices or possibilities... all of them end and get stuck at that stage.
                        Pressing any key or sequence of keys after this a number of times ( I did not count) simply results in a continuous "Beeeeep".

                        All this seems to suggest that the actual BIOS is not 'broken', but may perhaps only need resetting or something like that??

                        I really hope that this additional bit helps.

                        Many thanks for your efforts to come up with a solution this far!

                        F11 all by itself gives me a boot window to choose bios or my two (or sometimes one) OS's. I read you 4 times and unsure if we are on laptop hdd now and not external hdd? is external unplugged on all this? what OS is on the laptop. It's either manjaro or solus.
                        bootloader get mangled?
                        are you wiping the disk after each install (gparted) and reformatting GPT?
                        you can get the basic HP splash but everything is dead after that?
                        CTRL+ALT+F2 (or 3 or 1 etc) upon booting should give you a terminal window. If you can get that you are on the road to wellness.
                        2 cents
                        edit @janetlox

                        My summary of what happens when I try to start the laptop is the laptop unplugged with no externals like USB sticks, external HDD's or anything attached, and no operating system installed. Manjaro and Solus were on the laptop hard disk when I tried to replace both of them with Solus ... and got stuck halfway through with the notification that the install had failed, the disk had been 'wiped', and to restart to try again. I did try to restart which is the stage I am now at and do not know how to proceed from ... as described, the hp logo and splash screen with bottom notification are displayed every time, without any option to proceed further.
                        The docked external hard drive experience is on my Dell Windows 10 main PC with a USB docking station plugged in to run old hard disk drives for making backups and trying various OS's like Manjaro and Solus, and yes, I even had both of those on that hard disk to try and duplicate the failed efforts of the HP laptop.
                        At no stage have I wiped or partitioned the laptop hard disk. Being a novice usually leave those things for the installer to take care of. Likewise reformatting the GPT is a not to be trodden on minefield for me ... I wouldn't know where to start or even what I was trying to accomplish.
                        I hope this helps?

                        @brent
                        I failed to mention that I tried your final suggestion: "CTRL+ALT+F2 (or 3 or 1 etc) upon booting should give you a terminal window.", but sadly no terminal window -- or anything else for that matter.
                        Indeed, whatever I try, I get the basic HP splash screen with everything 'dead' after that.

                          janetlox

                          Have you tried to pull the hard drive and boot the machine without it? It shouldn't cause your issue but you never know. The other option could be a memory chip issue.

                          I don't know if you have removed a hard drive or not before, but that video above shows the process at about 50 seconds in.

                            I have never removed a hard drive or anything else from a laptop before, and would rather leave that as a last resort.
                            I do remember reading somewhere that disconnecting and replacing the CMOS battery (if that is what it is called) will definitely reset the BIOS to its original (factory) settings. Should that maybe be my next move? If so, I might as well do the hard drive removal trick then?

                              janetlox

                              Yes, removing the CMOS battery may work just as well, as it drains the bios memory , resetting everything back to defaults. Normally they are buried in a corner of a motheroard or soldered on, but in your case it looks as though it is under the long centre panel on the bottom of the machine. It looks like it's a cr232 battery, just at the base of the memory chips.

                              Pull it out for 10 minutes or so along with the main battery, and then see what it does.

                                I removed the CMOS battery, and replaced it about an hour later.
                                Upon starting the laptop again there was a notification of which I do not remember the exact wording, but it boils down to the fact that the BIOS or BIOS settings had indeed been changed, that I could check F10 BIOS options to see details and that the system would restart ... which it did before I could even finish reading it all ...
                                After that restart the laptop was back exactly as it had been before -- it would display the logo splash screen with notifications exactly as before and likewise fail to proceed any further.

                                I think I will have to take a good look at more technical (BIOS- and PC Startup) fora and/or specific hp write ups, and worry about Solus again as soon as I have found a solution, not that Solus is likely to present any problems :-)

                                A BIG THANK YOU to everyone for the help in trying to solve this problem -- it seems to be a tricky one.

                                Regards, janetlox