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Last night, the hard disk of my laptop encountered the click-of-death. As a result, I couldn't boot into my Windows 7 installation anymore.

So that it's not a total loss, I took the advice of a friend and tried setting-up a USB stick that could boot up Ubuntu.

Using someone else's ancient computer (which runs Win XP) I downloaded ubuntu-14.04.1-desktop-amd64.iso, reformatted a spare USB I had, and followed the instructions detailed here: http://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop/create-a-usb-stick-on-windows

Then, I removed my old clicking harddrive and put in the USB in my laptop, hoping to boot up into Ubuntu. However, I get stuck at some screen that looks like this message:

SYSLINUX 4.07 EDD 4.07-pre7 Copyright (C) 1994-2013 H. Peter Anvin et al

After researching, I was thinking that maybe it has to do with my USB being detected as USB-FDD instead of USB-HDD (as per the bios boot order screen)... but then I don't have any idea how to make my laptop bios detect the USB as HDD.

Help please. Thanks!

NOTE: I'm aware of the following question: Not booting from USB or CD (SYSLINUX Message) - but my USB is already formatted FAT32 and the boot options are set to boot from USB (which shouldn't even matter I think since the BIOS will automatically try the next boot option anyway?).

The USB I'm using is an HP V210W 4GB Pen Drive, if that helps.

I've already also done an md5sum check on the ubuntu-14.04.1-desktop-amd64.iso file and the hash checks out.

Community
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heisenbergman
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  • Welcome to AskUbuntu! I believe you also need to include the .iso file on the USB as well, however I cannot remember where exactly. – No Time Aug 29 '14 at 07:05

1 Answers1

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Solved it. Changed the USB stick I was using to a 8GB Sandisk Cruzer.

The BIOS then detected it as USB-HDD (although I still don't get what dictates which is an FDD and what is an HDD), and I'm now posting this from the Ubuntu installation.

heisenbergman
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