[PLUG] UEFI Boot order

Hi all,

I am trying to rescue a neighbor’s computer, it is an HP Pavilion G7 running Windows 8 (yea I know, but too late now). I have Ubuntu on a USB stick, but cannot get it to boot ahead of the hard drive. The BIOS is selected for UEFI boot order and if I revert to legacy mode, it indicates that it may not be bootable for some operating systems, including Windows 8. The UEFI boot order specified is:

OS boot manager

Internal CD/DVD ROM drive

USB Diskette on Key/USB hard drive

USB CD/DVD ROM drive

Network adapter (disabled)

Which does not indicate where the hard drive is in the order, unless it is in OS boot manager, which generally would not be first in the order. There is also a selection for secure boot which was enabled. I disabled it, but made no difference as to booting to USB.

Anyone know what the appropriate BIOS settings are to boot Ubuntu 14.04 from a USB? Alternatively, do I select legacy mode anyway, or will the HD be inaccessible even if I get Ubuntu to load?

Incidentally, here are the symptoms I am encountering. The machine would eventually boot to Windows 8, but runs incredibly slow. It can take ½ hour to get past the login. Even Windows isn’t that slow. J

I ran the HP diagnostics which indicated problems with both the memory and the hard drive. Presuming the memory error was contributing to the hard drive error, I replaced the memory. The memory error went away, but the hard drive error remained. I have tried several times to run the create recovery image, but have yet to get it to run anywhere close to completion, so I am now just trying to get something to boot that will allow me to copy off the files. I have also been able to boot to a command prompt to run chkdsk, but it returned with only very insignificant errors, which I was able to repair, but otherwise made no difference.

Any ideas are appreciated.

Regards,

Eric