Yet ANOTHER Plop hang/freeze/crash when trying to load USB

[KocLobster]

There seems to be a ton of these threads both on these forums and outside of these forums. I'm starting to wonder if this program is actually even able to do what it advertises. Needless to say, I'm pretty disappointed. I am trying to install win7 on an older system; obviously the BIOS does not have the option to boot from USB for some reason. I found this strange because the motherboard has 4 USB ports. Anyways, to my problem I am hoping you can solve...

Using the most recent version of PloP, 5.0.15. Same story as a million other people: I have my USB stick inserted into a USB port, I have my plop ISO on a CD in the cd drive, and it loads up fine. When I try to select the USB option, it freezes and crashes, and forces me to reboot. The message is always the two messages, either it freezes after 'HOST 1' or it freezes immediately after detecting the USB device. I have tried everything imaginable. I have played with all of the different settings, and different combinations of settings. I've also tried these different combinations of settings on ALL of my different USB ports. I have two USB ports in the front for convenience, 4 in the back on the motherboard, and 2 more from a serial card connected to the motherboard, for a total of 8 different ports. Please don't tell me to remove any other USB devices/bluetooth/etc., I can absolutely assure you that there are no USB devices attached and that isn't what is causing the program to not work.

Any ideas? I suspect it just simply doesn't work.
Here is the messages I always see, if interested:

LOADING EHCI DRIVER
SEARCHING ON HOSTS
HOST 1


If I turn on 'Force USB1.1', it is unable to find the USB stick, regardless of which port I put it in. This is the message I always get if I force USB1.1:

LOADING UHCI DRIVER
SEARCHING ON HOSTS
HOST 1
HOST 2
HOST 3
HOST 4
DRIVER REMOVED
LOADING DHCI DRIVER
SEARCHING ON HOSTS
DRIVER REMOVED
BOOT ERROR
NO BOOT DEVICE FOUND, PLEASE RETRY IT

[Elmar]

When you already read other posts in this forum, then you will also have been reading, that the boot manager USB driver has only limited error handling. Why? Because of the small size.

The Boot Manager USB driver hangs mostly on newer machines. However, even when the newer machines does not provide USB boot by the BIOS, they provide access to the connected USB drives as internal drives. When the Boot Manager starts, just dont use the USB option, use the hard disk entry above which is not there, when no USB drive is connected.

...I'm starting to wonder if this program is actually even able to do what it advertises. Needless to say, I'm pretty disappointed..

The Boot Manager USB driver is not perfect. It is meanwhile many years old, it has a lot of limitations, but it also helped many many people and the Boot Manager is free. When it does not work, then just don't use it. Just use an alternative software.

...Please don't tell me to remove any other USB devices/bluetooth/etc., I can absolutely assure you that there are no USB devices attached and that isn't what is causing the program to not work...

Did you ever hear about internal USB HUBs? I don't think so. They are used to provide easily many USB ports on the mainboard. When you have been reading the Boot Manager documentation, then you know, that USB HUBs are not supported. This can also be the cause of a freeze.

[KocLobster]

I appreciate your quick post and I am sorry for ranting; it is quite frustrating when something doesn't work when it says it does and you expect it to.

You're right that it is free, that is definitely a positive aspect. However, something to consider is what good is something that is free if it does not work? Unfortunately, there is no alternative software for this type of thing.

I gave your suggestion a try, but as I had feared, it didn't accomplish anything. The two hard disk entry options I had to choose from I tried. The first one, HDA, just booted into my computer's main OS, windows XP. I rebooted and tried the second option. It acted like it was trying to install a new OS, but it just gave me an error message. First it wanted me to remove any media (so I took out the CD with the boot manager on it, leaving just the USB stick with Win7 on it), and after that it just kept repeating the error of saying that it couldn't boot the media, please change the boot device or try again....blah blah blah.

I know the install files on the USB stick are 100% good, I have already tested it and used it on another machine to install win7.


I'm still left with the unfortunate conclusion that this just doesn't work for some reason. Thanks for your time.

[Elmar]

...it is quite frustrating when something doesn't work when it says it does and you expect it to.

Thats part of the life. Often things doesn't work as expected.

You're right that it is free, that is definitely a positive aspect. However, something to consider is what good is something that is free if it does not work?

That it doesn't work on your computer doesn't mean that it never works. And when you talk about many other bug reports, then I have to say that it is also part of the life that people report problems in the forum and people where it works doesn't post "yippee, it works here".

Unfortunately, there is no alternative software for this type of thing.

Currently not, but when you look at my page, then you will see that a new boot manager is under development, but currently paused because of other work. The new boot manager will not have those USB limitations.

I gave your suggestion a try, but as I had feared, it didn't accomplish anything.

Also try it from the menu when you press "q" in the main menu.


Regards
Elmar

[KocLobster]

Unfortunately that didn't do anything. Thanks anyway for your time, and sorry I got so frustrated.

[dd-b]

Everything is, in the end, my own fault, of course.  Free software is always worth more than I paid for it, but not always as much more as I had hoped :-).

But I wish I'd seen something high-up on the site warning me about the hub issue.  Because I've just spent three days rebuilding my laptop from recovery disks, and losing my Windows 10 upgrade too, from a sequence of events that started with my thinking plop would solve the inability of this older laptop to boot from USB. Apparently there was never the slightest hope -- and actually no hope for any other system I remember ever looking at the Device Manager page of, either, since every single one of them has internal hubs. I suppose it's possible some of them are wired so there is at least one accessible USB port that doesn't go through a hub; there isn't on this laptop, since I tried them all one by one.

(no data loss, just time wasted recovering from my adventure)

[Elmar]

The core of the boot manager is meanwhile old and has issues with modern computers (explained on other threads). All the issues should be fixed with the new boot manager when I find time to program it. I hope I can do it in 2017. USB HUBs and keyboards will be supported too.

But I wish I'd seen something high-up on the site warning me about the hub issue.

There is a note about that in the documentation
https://www.plop.at/en/bootmanager/usbinfo.html


Regards
Elmar