I have a problem booting linux from a usb drive on my hp tx1020 laptop.
i have installed backtrack2 on a 1gb usb drive to boot form it on my vista laptop, but it dosnt work, its like it wont recognize the usb drive, when i click escape at the startup theres not even an option to boot from usb.
im running vista on it..

on my other laptop, which is a hp dv2130ea, where i am running ubuntu, it works fine, so im a little confuised, since its not the usb drive thats the problem ?

Booting from USB requires BIOS support in your computer. Are you sure the BIOS on the machine is capable and configured to boot from USB?

And, are you sure that Vista will let you enable boot-from-usb? IIRC, the Vista EULA (to which you agreed when you booted Visa) gives Microsoft permission to reset your BIOS setting if whoever programmed some part of Vista told the program to "verify" the BIOS settings. (The "justification" offered for this "feature" is that it prevents bypassing the content protection security built into Vista by preventing you from booting some other OS.)

The rather draconian EULA may be why so few corporations (fewer than 1%) have "moved" to Vista. (Or perhaps it's just the well known "relibality" of MS software.)

If Vista can controll the Bios setting it can only do so after it has been booted.

Before an operating system is boot any boot loader can deal with the Bios and Vista is not there unless the PC user allows it. Therefore I don't think Vista has a right or a means to disallow another system to be booted from a USB device when it is not operational. It may be reasonable for a computer supllier to refuse to warrant the hardware if a user gets into trouble in using an operating system other than that supplied with the PC.

In many mobo the Bios also has a facility to "enable" the USB legacy support. Booting from a USb device normally requires this to be enabled. So Try it out.

In the past I was also puzzled by some PC not able to boot from a USB device but got away each time by enabling the USB legacy support.