11.0.1 will not boot.

My goal is to have an HP Prodesk boot librelec from a USB key. If the USB key is not present, I want it to boot to Windows.

I have had much grief with Grub in the past so I do not want to attempt a grub based dual boot system. (if you really want to know, Grub appeared and defaulted before my keyboard was set up)

My first project step is to boot librelec on an old Toshiba laptop that normally run Windows 10 Home.

The Toshiba will correctly start up and run Puppy Linux when I install my Puppy USB key in the system. So nothing wrong with bios boot options, USB reader etc. Mouse keyboard, screen work perfectly.

I have created two USB keys with LIbrelec SD creator. One 2GB. One 32 GB. Neither works, so I don't think its a USB key issue.

When I power up the laptop, I get a Librelec start up screen.

Its only visible for a few seconds, but appears to give me three options using "boot:" as a command prompt

Installer, Live and Run.

It doesn't say how to select the appropriate option, and appears to choose a default option to run in 5 seconds (I've seen all 3) at random.

When it has defaulted to installer, it has displayed messages that it has successfully modified partitions on my disk .

This is an interesting choice as it happens before I have even had time to read, let alone comprehend, the options.

I presume it has done so, as Puppy finds 4 drives on a system that only contains one physical hdd and an empty CD writer.

It is certainly not what I wanted. I assumed librelec would be like Ubuntu and Puppy and leave my system unchanged without explicit commands before rapidly starting a system destruction.

It also displays for a fraction of a second some error message about initialiisation failure in ptp_kvm.

It then displays a screen message "Librelec (official) 11.0.1" and then appears to hang. However a USB key with activity light will continue to flash. So maybe its doing something, maybe not.

After a long time (eg cook and eat lunch, write this post) it doesn't do anything else, so I presume it is in a loop. All I can do to stop the system is power off the laptop

What am I doing wrong?

fwiw I have used OSMC in RPIs for years. But since I upgraded to RPI4, OSMC has become unusable hence my attempt at getting Librelec to work on a X86 architecture.

Thanks for all suggestions.

The reason I don't use rpi4 for librelec is that if OSMC has buffering problems, I assume librelec will too as both kodi based.

Testing will require watching movies until they stop. maybe take an hour.

I've also pretty much decided to use the pi as a NAS.

And like many people, with the number of second hand small form factor PC (HP, Dell, Lenovo) on the market these days I find PI are just not competitive. my system is a ryzen 3, 2200 with 8 gb. almost unused. with windows. 135eur. there are gazillions on ebay.

By the time you have bought a sd card, power supply, case, external usb drive, ... I think a new rpi4 will cost about the same and be nowhere near as powerful.

But anyway, back to librelec. I've tried run and live.

Both just display "Librelec (official) 11.0.1" and then nothing happens (at least within 30 minutes).

What should I try next?