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I created a USB stick from the ISO file of Xubuntu 22.10 but when I try to boot to it all I get is a mostly blank screen with the word GRUB and a flashing cursor at the upper left corner. I’ve created USB sticks before and have been using Ubuntu for many years so am not a newbie but have not seen this issue before. How can I get around it in order to do a fresh install?

Additionally, if I try typing anything at the cursor, after a few keystrokes, a single loud beep comes from the speakers with any further key presses.

The PC is a Gateway laptop with an AMD Turion64 processor and ATI Radeon Xpress 200M graphic display and is currently running Ubuntu Studio 22.10.

As an update, maybe I just found a workaround to the booting issue but problem not solved. Rather than using F10 and selecting the USB as the boot device, I used F2 and went to the BIOS Boot settings and changed the primary boot device to USB. That seemed to at least get it passed the GRUB prompt. For anyone reading this, the F2 and F10 key presses will likely be different on your own PCs.

That said, the USB stick’s indicator LED flashed for what seemed a long time while the screen remained blank other than the flashing cursor at the upper left but then suddenly filled with errors, the jist of which is:

Kernel panic - not syncing: No working init found.

DonP
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  • Actually, that has happened to me as well while booting lubuntu for a later installation on a really old netbook. All I had to do is let it for a while until it loads, after the installation it no longer happens and works smoothly. Let it be for some minutes and see what happens. – Alejandro Dec 17 '22 at 18:37
  • A couple weeks ago I let it go overnight which should be long enough! The USB stick used then was created on a newer system so after the problem, I recreated the USB stick for this attempt right here on the laptop but the problem persists. – DonP Dec 17 '22 at 18:42
  • How did you create the USB stick, Rufus, Etcher, mkusb, Disks, etc? See also: https://askubuntu.com/questions/1190764/why-doesnt-a-bootable-usb-boot – C.S.Cameron Dec 18 '22 at 04:05
  • I created it using the built-in media creator that came with the current Ubuntu installation but I am in another location now so can’t look to see what it was. – DonP Dec 18 '22 at 06:59
  • Please see: https://askubuntu.com/questions/1190764/why-doesnt-a-bootable-usb-boot – C.S.Cameron Dec 18 '22 at 07:49
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    Yes, I had read those already. Today I installed a different USB creator called USB Image Writer as I suspected that Startup Disk Creator that came with Ubuntu was defective. Rewrote the USB thumb drive and it boots properly now and is part way through the installation but for a while now there has been no hard drive or USB drive activity. Not sure if it will complete or not but I’ll let it go for a while longer to see what happens. This is the second attempt as the first had a hard drive error part way through so I used gParted to removed the partitions before trying again. – DonP Dec 18 '22 at 22:34
  • Since my last comment and partial install which hung up, it can no longer boot to anything. I have a fresh USB stick, a fresh DVD Live disk and even the PC’s own internal disk but each one just goes to a blank screen with a flashing cursor at the upper left. – DonP Dec 30 '22 at 03:48

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