Howto: Create LiveUSBs from Windows using a GUI (UNetbootin)

[drinkmocha]

My netbook (S10) is stuck on black screen after rebooting after a fresh install of Ubuntu using a liveUSB. Please help. I tried going to the boot order and BIOS but nothing happens. I hear the harddrive make a sound after 3 seconds and that's it.

Now I don't know what to do without being able to access even BIOS. Help please.

[borlosky]

My netbook (S10) is stuck on black screen after rebooting after a fresh install of Ubuntu using a liveUSB. Please help. I tried going to the boot order and BIOS but nothing happens. I hear the harddrive make a sound after 3 seconds and that's it.

Now I don't know what to do without being able to access even BIOS. Help please.

sounds more like a hardware/pc issue, but try to format/reinstall see if you get any change. if no change, i'd start trouble shooting your hardware. not being able to get into your pc's bios shouldn't have anything to do with an ubuntu install.

[dmanchipman]

Humm...

So I want to try something, but I'm not sure how safe it would be, and I wanted to check first.

I want to use UNetbootin to create a partition on my Zune and use a portion of its harddrive to work as a LiveUSB.

How plausible is this and will it work? What risks do I face by doing this?

[danmarycap]

Did you also check the contents of the drive you installed to after UNetbootin installed; were the contents of the Ubuntu ISO file, and the files syslinux.cfg, ubnkern, ubninit, and ldlinux.sys (you may need to use "show hidden files" to see them) in the top directory of the drive?

downloaded the ubuntu-8.10-alternate-i386.iso and used UNetbootin to create a Live USB bootable drive. When I try to boot my Dell Mini9 from the USB (so I can install Ubuntu 8.10), I get (on a DOS-like black screen with white text):

Intel UNDI, PXE-2.1 (build 082)
Copyright (C) 1997-2000 Intel Corporation

For Realtek RTL8101E/8102E PCI-E Ethernet Controller v1.08 (080408)
PXE-E61: Media test failure, check cable
PXE-M0F: Exiting PXE ROM.
Error loading operating system
(and it stops there with a blinking cursor)

or, sometimes, instead of "error loading OS", I get:

Disk error
Press any key to restart


I checked the USB drive (on my WinXP machine) and the ldlinux.sys file you mentioned is not on the USB drive anywhere.

Any thoughts?

[D_one]

I have looked at a few other places for some help here but I will try here.

I used remastersys to create a custom iso image of my ubuntu install then used unetbootin to put it on an sd card and make it bootable, works great, (the second time for me unfortunately) It is a great combo of tools to create a bootable restore of your system on an sd card.

So here is where I made my mistake: The first time around My sdb1 (sd card) was coming up under sda2 (wha t I thought was my sd card, but was actually some other file system, possibly related to windows).

Now I have a custom install of my original system (eeebuntu filesystem was originally on sda6, and is still there) and the boot loader installed with unetbootin replaced my old one that let me choose between windows and eeebuntu. Now I cant boot into either. Lucky for me, my backup version works almost as well as the original and I sucessfully made the bootable sd card the second time around.

Has anyone else encountered this?

So my questions:

Idealy I just want it back the way it was.
1.Can I install another boot loader that will recognize my windows (hopefull it still works since I dont have a cd drive)?

2. I cant seem to find my origina menu.lst in my original file system, is it gone? I dont see such a file in the unetbootin version, Where does it choose it's boot options? Can I edit that to my old configurations?

3. Is there any other changes that I would have to do in order to get my other two systems to be bootable?

Asus eee 900ha,

$ sudo fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x92e4538c

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 3188 25607578+ 7 HPFS/NTFS (windows)
/dev/sda2 18432 19452 8201182+ b W95 FAT32 (where I accidentally used unetbootin to install the iso image)
/dev/sda3 19453 19457 40162+ ef EFI (FAT-12/16/32) (?not sure here)
/dev/sda4 3189 18431 122439397+ f W95 Ext'd (LBA) (?not sure here)
/dev/sda5 3189 3218 240943+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda6 3219 6405 25599546 83 Linux
(my original eeebuntu install)
/dev/sda7 6406 17808 91594566 b W95 FAT32
/dev/sda8 17809 18431 5004216 82 Linux swap / Solaris

Partition table entries are not in disk order

Disk /dev/sdb: 8199 MB, 8199864320 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 996 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x000888c4

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 * 1 996 8000338+ b W95 FAT32


Help
Thanks in advance!

[D_one]

OK, so I was easily able to boot back into windows by using partition editor to change the boot flag. However, after trying to change the boot flag to all the other partitions, I think that I erased the partition that had my boot list on it. Thus I still have only 3 options, boot into windows, boot into a live version on sd card (by holding esc) or boot to the copy of my system on sda2. So, my question is really the same, how do I either get my old menu.lst back, or edit the existing one that was installed with unetbootin to work with my system (allow for options to boot into my original system or windows).

Help, anyone?

[D_one]

And, before a reply I solved it

I downloaded and installed supergrubdisk and it basically found my old grub and re-installed it on the original partiition that my system was on!

I am amazingly impressed with these tools. It seems that whatever I want to do, someone has thought of and done it (except found a way for me to print on my lexmark printer which is really the only reason that I would keep xp on).

So: for all those other eee users out there or anyone without an optical drive (the netbooks are coming....)

Remastersys: a tool to create a bootable iso of your system as is now, combined with;
Unetbootin: to put that .iso on your sd card is more or less a must have. Do not choose to "show all drives" here if you sd card doesnt come up, just reformat your sd card and it should come up just fine (that was my mistake). If you do by accident replace your working os with the unetbootin version, get
supergrubdisk: put it on another sd card (or the same one if you dont need to boot into the card) and choose the install of linux that you want grub to be in.

I am now more or less completely worry free with my eee since I can always boot from the sd card into my exact system with all my tools to fix ..... almost' anything, or so it seems.

my computers back baby!

Im no longer sure if these posts are relevant here, feel free to move them somewhere else if needed.

[gwon]

When I attempt to boot from my usb stick, I select it from the boot menu and then get the error message

ntldr is missing

any ideas?

[Flying caveman]

This worked great for what I needed it for. My 2gopc came with a flaky install of Edubuntu. I used Unetbootin to put a regular Ubuntu 8.04 on it and now it works great.

Does this mean my CD/DVD burner will go the way of the floppy drive?

Thanks TuxCantFly for this wonderful and powerful tool.

[DougM1]

I have a Dell Mini 9 (aka Inspiron 910) running Ubuntu. I wanted to upgrade so I purchased a Runcore 32G SSD.

I cloned my original 4G SSD to the 32G SSD, using "sudo dd if=//dev/sda1 of=/dev/sdb2". When it was complete both drives had the same data on them - good start. So I swapped out the drives and attempted to boot up. The computer froze up at a black screen that said "GRUB" in the top left corner. I swapped the drives back and everything booted fine.

I had probably mistakenly assumed that if you cloned a hard drive that the new hard drive would be a mirror of the old one, only with more capacity. Wrong answer!!!!!

I did some more research on line and found that I needed to make a Live USB stick (as there is no optical drive), so I did that, making a Live USB of Ubuntu 8.04, using UNetbootin. I was to then be able to boot off the stick so that I could fix the "GRUB"

I again swapped out my drives, edited my BIOS to boot off of the USB stick as directed, and attempted to boot up. A UNetbootin screen came up that said it would boot in 10 seconds, it counted down the 10 seconds, and then came back with the message that it would boot in 10 seconds, repeat, repeat, etc. There was also a line that said "Press [Tab] to edit options". When I do that I get a line of code: /ubnkern initrd=/ubninit _

What do I do now?