Trouble with a Thumb Drive

[dantrevino]

Mine works like a champ. Maybe, like you suggest, you should try a different stick with the same process.

For me the USB creator that is installed by default has worked out of the box every time.

good luck
dan

[yakove]

I went from using the Kingston datatraveler to a Sandisk USB drive and it worked perfectly. I did a little research about the new kingston datatravelers. The simply are too slow a device for boot... There are many a comment supporting this on the Newegg.com website where you can go to comment on this product.

[Marikawn]

Have you tried using unetbootin?

[ezsurfer]

am using a Kingston, works fine.

What I found after struggling through 2 different USB sticks is some are not "bootable" flagged out of the box.

There is an HP utility for XP that does it, so I just did it at work. after that, both my USB sticks work fine.


ezsurfer

[itnet7]

Originally Posted by ezsurfer am using a Kingston, works fine. What I found after struggling through 2 different USB sticks is some are not "bootable" flagged out of the box. There is an HP utility for XP that does it, so I just did it at work. after that, both my USB sticks work fine. ezsurfer

For the benefit of others, mostly here is what you can do to find the device and toggle the bootable flag.

Plug-in the thumb drive, and type: dmesg

[205935.776962] sd 15:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off
[205935.776968] sd 15:0:0:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: 0b 00 00 08
[205935.776973] sd 15:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
[205935.776982]  sdb: sdb1
[205935.780216] sd 15:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI removable disk
[205935.780360] sd 15:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg2 type 0

You can tell by the above return that the device is /dev/sdb1.

You can begin fdisk by typing the following:

sudo fdisk /dev/sdb

It will open fdisk and you will see

Command (m for help):

You can hit 'm' to view all of the menu options.

First lets start off by typing 'p' to print the partition table to the screen.

Disk /dev/sdb: 1051 MB, 1051197440 bytes
33 heads, 61 sectors/track, 1019 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 2013 * 512 = 1030656 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x000a5438

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdb1               1        1019     1025593    b  W95 FAT32

You will notice that Under the Boot column there is no asterisk present. This means that the bootable flag is not turned on.

In order to change this:

The menu reveals that option 'a' is used to toggle the bootable flag.

select 'a', it will ask you for the parition number select the partition number you want to make bootable. In my case I wanted to make the 1st partition bootable so I entered '1'.

Now when you print out the partition table you will see.

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdb1   *           1        1019     1025593    b  W95 FAT32

Then as always in fdisk select 'w' to write the changes.

Hope this helps someone in the future.

Chris C.
itnet7

[dark_religion]

Looks correct to me.