I just recently got a USB flash drive with Mint 18.3 which now fails to boot, and it never did boot. It is a 32 GB Samsung with 64 bit Linux Mint Cinnamon and has the persistence feature on it. And yes my 2009 store built Windows 7 based PC is set in the BIOS so it will boot to CD and removable device first, and I select the USB with the boot device menu early during the boot process, which just goes to a screen that says; "boot error". So what is the easy and good way to make it boot up okay, is it install the syslinux files and configure the menu?

Hey james2b,

A couple of things I would check, if you haven't already :

• Make sure the architecture of the Mint install you have on the USB drive matches that of your hardware (32 or 64 bit, I mean).
• Make sure you have created a "BIOS based" USB installation drive and not a UEFI one. A 2009 era computer will be BIOS based.
• Try booting the USB drive on another computer and compare results.

I'd start with these steps. Let us know how it turns out.

I'd think that this usb would be a hard drive order choice, not a usb choice.

Okay so now I have done the steps to install the syslinux onto that USB drive from in my Windows 7, and after a few corrected attempts, it did complete except for the last step shown in the how to create a bootable USB, which is to enter configuration settings in the syslinux.cfg file which I made new but empty. But due to that file most likely, it still goes to a "boot error" So I should either find out what to enter into the syslinux.cfg file, or return it to OSDisk.com, or just do a full create process with either Unetbootin or the Linux Live USB Creator, and I can select the persistence option to save changes also.

Still not a removable device I think.

Have you ever booted a usb from this machine? I would tend to agree with jefro that you should look under HDD (hard drive) options in the BIOS rather than removable devices for your Samsung usb.

What I do during the boot up is hit the F8 key early on to bring up the boot device menu, which includes all devices detected, ( CD/DVD, hard drives, and any removable devices, so then I just select it and hit enter. However now I have installed a new Linux on it using Unetbootin tool, Ubuntu 17.10 and with some persistence by way of that casper rw save file. Unetbootin works well except the iso file download is really slow, so it is better to first download your linux iso separately and then use that choose iso file option. Okay thanks, and one more question, does it work well if I install a common Linux on my Intel solid state drive, which is connected internal in my computer, and it is a 120 GB, ?

" does it work well if I install a common Linux on my Intel solid state drive, which is connected internal in my computer, and it is a 120 GB"

If you are happy with the way the live usb works then I'd think a proper install to an internal drive will do better.