Trouble initializing a USB drive

Hi,

Open the File Manager on the upper left corner of the desktop and see if it comes up with anything...

It may have a feature to recover deleted partitions... I will check and let you know...

Thanks.

I was able to turn off the Secure Boot feature, and boot to the DVD.  Part Magic came up.  I chose the only option that seemed to fit my case, which was "Scan and repair disk partitions."  It found no partitions at all on the drive in question.  (In contrast DiskPart finds one.)  There didn't appear to be a an option to, absent a partition on the disk, recover files.

Thoughts?

Thanks again for your help.

Hi,

That should have worked... The files on the image you posted match what I see on mine... I tried both a CD and DVD just to make sure that there was not an issue burning the file to a DVD... There was not...

I'm thinking that you might have a BIOS setting that may be responsible for the "Not Authenticated" error... Look for a setting called "Secure Boot" and disable it temporarily... I think it would be under the Bios "Security" tab, but maybe not...

Another possibility is that there may be a UEFI Bios issue booting with a DVD...

In your Boot Options, look for a "UEFI DVD" as opposed to just "DVD"...

On my machine, Parted Magic started to boot but did not complete when I choose "UEFI DVD", but my machine is not running UEFI Bios at the moment...

To remove the pmagic that is ready to burn... Just right click on it and select delete...

This is a copy of the file you right clicked on and selected burn... It will end up in the Recycle Bin. Be sure to double check that the original still exists before clearing your Recycle Bin, just to be safe...

Thanks for that.  Very interesting.

So I put one of those disks in the tray, and I selected the option you recommended.  I then right-clicked on the file pmagic_2013_08_01.iso, and chose "Burn disk image".  The machine seemed to do as one would hope.  It apparently burned the file to the disk, "finalized" it, then checked it, finding it to be OK.  Then it ejected the disk.

So I turned off the computer, reinserted the disk in the tray and pushed it in, and started the computer.  While it was starting, I pressed F9 repeatedly until I got to a menu that offered me a choice of boot devices.  I chose the DVD drive.  The response given was, "Selected boot image did not authenticate."

I then chose the C drive and booted normally.  Looking at the contents of the disk I burned, I see this:

BTW, do you know how I can remove those last two files from the queue of files to be burned to disk?

I'm still wrestling with the fine details of getting this done.

First off, I bought a pack of Maxell DVD-R disks.  According to the packaging, they can be written once (and only once).  I think these should do the job, right?  (Is it just me, or is the designation "DVD-R" confusing.  To me, the "R" suggests "read-only".)  It seems that in my various efforts, I've been able to write some stuff to at least one such disk but, without getting into the detail, I've seen confusing things happening.

Which choice is correct?  I've tried a bunch of things that haven't worked and unfortunately, at this point, I'm not sure what I've tried and what I haven't tried.  It would be helpful to remove the uncertainty by knowing the correct answer to the above.

Thanks.

The "R" stands for "recordable."  See the differences between recordable discs here.