Ubuntu 8.10 USB stick non persistent option missing

[basm]

I've installed Ubuntu 8.10 (oktober 2008) on the harddisk of my pc and am trying to build a bootable persistent USB pen (16Gb) after being booted into this OS.

I created the USB startup disk with the "Create a USB startup disk" utility and supplied the 8.10 iso file (ubuntu-8.10-desktop-i386.iso - 2 february 2009) combined with the settings to store documents and settings in reserved extra space (12.5Gb).

The creation of the USB startup disk completes without any problems.

On booting the USB pen it boots into the Ubuntu bootloader asking me to select a language (every boot) and once the language is selected it shows me several boot options, but not the one with which I can persist my settings. It supplies me with an live boot option that does not store the changes and therfore is not what I'm looking for.

What am I missing here? Why is the boot Ubuntu and save changes option not available? Any help would be greatly appreciated!
(Ps. I tried unetbootin but the installed version of ubuntu by this tool does not boot into the graphical user interface)

(ubuntu is not speaking my language at the moment :-)

Cheers,

Bas

[basm]

In addition; if I
1) wait for the loader to boot into the Live session .
2) Reboot the system using the normal procedure (the live session button and click reboot)

The system boots into the menu again and if I then wait again for it to boot into the Live session; It quits into a shell screen running BusyBox (or something).

Again what am I missing doing wrong?

Thanks for any tips/tricks!