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I am using an xps 13 9365, which was data wiped from bios by a friend who then gave it to me thinking it was dead. I tried booting with a USB (current LTS distro (18.04 or similar)) boot disk and got into the language selection / setup menu. By using the F6 option I selected noapic. In bios sata is set to raid and legacy the secure boot option is off.

But when I try to install I get kicked into a tiny font window with the following message

(initramfs) mount: Mounting /cow on root failed: Invalid argument overlay mount failed

Any ideas?

Craig Cammann
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    If you created the USB boot drive with Rufus and selected persistence, you will get such an error with Ubuntu 18.04 LTS. It should work if you make a new attempt, this time without selecting persistence. Please let us know if this was the problem, or if it is another problem. – sudodus Oct 11 '19 at 06:30
  • You can also try the different settings for SATA in the BIOS, maybe AHCI is available and will work better. – sudodus Oct 11 '19 at 06:44
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    First comment from @sudodus worked for me, installing elementary OS 5 from USB on huawei matebook x pro, from windows 10. I used rufus "with persistence" initially, selecting "no persistence" fixed this issue – abgordon Oct 12 '19 at 23:31

1 Answers1

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Received this error in Ubuntu [Elementary OS] using Rufus 3.8 when selecting persistence. The solution was to create a live USB without persistence, per comment above.

whittet
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    If you still want a persistent live drive, you can try according to this link: [Persistent live drive with a partition for persistence](https://askubuntu.com/questions/1181854/how-is-it-easier-to-make-a-persistent-live-drive-with-ubuntu-19-10) – sudodus Nov 24 '19 at 21:10
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    I can confirm this. While trying to try Ubuntu 18.04.4 LTS via a Live USB drive on an HP ProBook 6470b, I ran into `initramfs mount: mounting /cow on /root failed invalid argument overlay mount failed` at the boot-up of Ubuntu. This was because I selected persistent storage (8 GB) while flashing Ubuntu using Rufus 3.9.1624. **Reflashing without persistent storage ("0 size") solved this problem.** The machine now boots into Ubuntu 18.04.04 LTS. Now I'm trying to figure out how to get WiFi working but that's a different story ... – HenrikB Apr 11 '20 at 20:13