Problems booting from USB stick

[OwenDW]

Gday guys,

I currently have an Acer Aspire 5570Z with Ubuntu 8.10 on it. I wish to do a secure wipe of my laptop as I *was* thinking of selling. However, when I went to use Dban, the CD drive choked. Ok, no worries,I'll boot from USB. USB Boot is an option in the BIOS, so I made sure it was selected as first choice (CD not working and all). However, it continues to boot into the hard-drive, completely bypassing the USB key. The USB should work, it works on my Vista PC, and I would have thought the OS wouldn't have much to do with it?

Any help? How can I get it to boot from USB?

[pewterbot9]

Do you have an SD card slot (and card, of course)? Try booting up from that, in lieu of a USB drive. Don't know why my Asus eee PC 1000 stopped being able to boot via USB, but it will boot via SD card. So maybe this will work for you, too.

[kestrel1]

You may need to enable Legacy USB support in the BIOS.