Concerning the lack of an option in the BIOS to boot from the flash drive, that's a BIOS issue (consult your motherboard's manual, you may just find some useful info on USB booting). However, since you're running Ubuntu on that computer, you should be able to boot, using the following steps:
Let GRUB (the Ubuntu bootloader) start up, but don't let it boot Ubuntu yet. Instead, press ESC if needed to get to the boot menu (may be unnecessary), then press "c" to get to the grub command line.
Then, on the GRUB boot menu, enter the following commands:
Code:
root (hd1,0)
chainloader +1
boot
That should let your Ubuntu computer boot from the USB drive. Note that the device after root may not necessarily be (hd1,0) depending on your hard drive configuration; try different numbers for the first one if that one doesn't work; you can start typing "root (hd" and press TAB multiple times and it'll list the possible devices.
That issue on the Vista computer booting from USB (you did this straight from the BIOS boot menu I presume?) is strange, though. Are there the 2 files "ubnkern" and "ubninit" in the root directory of the USB drive, with sizes 1.8MB and 7.5MB (for 8.04) respectively? What operating system did you run UNetbootin from (Windows or Ubuntu, which version of each)? When you re-run UNetbootin on that Vista computer, do you get the same issue?
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