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bparkman
March 6th, 2010, 06:09 AM
Please forgive me if this has been covered, I searched but didn't find anything relevant. I have an HP 2140 with Windows 7 RC build 7100. It's expired, and now shuts down every two hours. I decided I'd rather install Linux than put a new Win7 on it. Anyway, I have tried EVERYTHING to get a bootable USB to work. The funny thing is I installed Win7RC from a USB over WinXP. For some reason, no matter what method I try, and I've tried all I can find, my computer will not run files from the USB on boot. The computer has an option to boot from USB, and I've done it before, but am baffled as to why I can't do it with a Ubuntu USB drive. All I want to do is install Ubuntu 9.10, clean from a USB flash drive, erasing all evidence of Win7RC. I can't believe how hard this has been. I do not want my first encounter with Linux to end negatively! Please help!!

PRC09
March 6th, 2010, 07:21 AM
How did you create the usb drive? Does it not boot at all ? Any error messages?

hatalar205
March 6th, 2010, 10:21 AM
Try this.
http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/

presence1960
March 6th, 2010, 01:38 PM
If your flash drive is under 4 GB it may be showing under hard disks in BIOS. When you boot the flash drive go into BIOS and look in the hard disk boot order. If the flash drive is listed there move it up to first disk to boot, save changes to CMOS and continue booting.

motorhead_1
March 6th, 2010, 02:35 PM
I'm sorry to put this question in your thread but I've a similar problem, is it possible that my BIOS doesn't have a boot option for my USB external HD ?

presence1960
March 6th, 2010, 02:42 PM
I'm sorry to put this question in your thread but I've a similar problem, is it possible that my BIOS doesn't have a boot option for my USB external HD ?

The only way to tell if your BIOS is capable of booting from USB is to either go into BIOS and look or refer to the motherboard/BIOS documentation. If you don't have the documentation as long as you know your motherboard make & model you can get the documentation at the manufacturer's web site.

bparkman
March 6th, 2010, 10:34 PM
Thank you for the quick replies. I should have put more info in my original post. I have tried unetbootin and usb-installer. Even tried downloading the entire DVD image, unpacked it to the USB drive (8GB Kingston DataTraveler) and it wouldn't boot from that either. My BIOS does have USB Hard Drive listed as a boot option, but when I choose it on boot (press F9 to get boot device options), it just goes to a black screen with a flat cursor blinking in the upper left. It's as if my computer isn't finding anything it can, or wants to, run on the flash drive when booting. Is there some file that needs to be on the flash drive root that will tell the computer to run files there? Do you think Win 7 RC is interfering? Does anyone have a screenshot of the root level of a USB drive that is bootable? I've seen some sights where you have to move files around and even rename file from iso* to sys*, etc.

bparkman
March 7th, 2010, 01:15 AM
Got it to work!! My fault too. When using UNetbootin, I failed to make the USB drive and partition 1 active, so my computer wasn't seeing it as bootable. Once I did that, voila! Now in the process of wiping win7rc and loading Ubuntu 9.10 on HP 2140!!! Can't wait to dive in! :D