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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?

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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, 2019 at 6:30
  • You can also try the different settings for SATA in the BIOS, maybe AHCI is available and will work better.
    – sudodus
    Oct 11, 2019 at 6:44
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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, 2019 at 23:31

1 Answer 1

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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.

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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
    – sudodus
    Nov 24, 2019 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, 2020 at 20:13

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