I have an Acer D257 running windows 7. A while ago I had installed ubuntu on it then decided to reinstall Windows. Now am trying to reinstall linux but the usb won't boot. I've tried 4 different distros and all gave me the same result. Computer starts, it starts reading the usb then for half a second the screen turns whiteish and I can see the syslinux menu then the screen turns black with a blinking cursor but i can't do or type anything, even ctrl+alt+del doesn't work. I've tried to update the bios and that didn't work. I've tried googleing the prob. but no luck on finding anything useful. Thought I almost had it with this: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1654004&page=7 but I have no such option in my bios. The usb works on my other laptop so I know it's not a prob. with the usb drive. I'm trying to figure out why it worked before and now it won't and it's driving me nuts... If anyone could point me in the right direction that would be awesome!!! thx

"I've tried to update the bios" Don't do that again. That could have been more trouble. Never do that unless the errata exactly says it fixes your issue.

Let's start over here.

When you power down your laptop completely, and you insert this usb device. What happens when you power up to the bios. Can you select the usb as a hard drive order choice?

While we are looking, be sure you test memory. Be sure that the amount you are supposed to have also shows correctly in tests.

So finally after 48hrs of wanting to rip my hair out I figured it out. At first I thought the prob. was with syslinux then thought i'd try this in cmd prompt:

DISKPART and hit enter.
LIST DISK and hit enter.
SELECT DISK 1 (Replace DISK 1 with your disk number for the usb)
CLEAN
CREATE PARTITION PRIMARY
SELECT PARTITION 1
ACTIVE
FORMAT
ASSIGN
EXIT

-Then used Universal usb Installer
-reboot
-When to bios and the usb didn't show as usb flash drive but showed up has usb hdd, moved it up the list
- Save & Exit

ubuntu started

Thank for trying to help and hope that this helps alot of people since i've notice that this is a common problem.