I downloaded Unetbootin so I could try out a few distros using my 2GB USB Drive. I tried putting Puppy Linux on it but it was giving me errors when I tried to boot from it. I then put Linux Mint on it but can't get my computers to boot from usb drive either.

I formatted the usb drive for FAT32 which is what it says to do on the Unetbootin site.

I am confused. What I am doing wrong here?

FAT32 should do fine, seems like you use bad distros or you run on unsupported hardware, what errors did Puppy gave?

Can your computer boot from a USB drive? Some can't.

It's also possible that the USB drive's master boot record is messed up. You might want to copy mbr.bin from the syslinux package to the USB drive's MBR (using the dd command as root, as shown below, where /dev/sdx is the USB drive) then try reinstalling Puppy. Be careful - you don't want to mess up your system's main drive!

In some cases the usb is difficult to get to be made bootable.

HP usb tools was one of the best tools if you can find it to fix non-bootable.

Installing a OS and adding in generic mbr sometimes helps.

Could try other live usb creators. See www.pendrivelinx.com


Consider making it a real install instead. I use virtual machines and some .iso image and only attach the usb to the vm.

Can make it on any computer with cd/dvd but you have to be VERY careful. I suggest you remove any internal hard drive just to be safe.

Also bios is an issue. Many bio's see the usb as a hard drive so you move the hard drive order and not the usb selected first.

There are many distro's that offer a hybrid or even usb image that one can copy to your flash drive.

I don't recall but I just tried booting from my laptop and all it said was "Remove device and press any key to restart" or something like that. So I am pretty sure it is the USB Drive.

My laptop definitely can. This Asus EeePC I am not so sure about though. I would like to install Linux Mint on it since Win7 Starter is kinda slow on it.

Did you get any warning/error messages when you used unetbootin? or did it seem to complete successfully?
It's very helpful to have error or warning messages you get when you fail to boot. Too many possibilities for anyone to do more than guess at possbile solutions.

That would be the expected behavior when rebooting from a Live CD (on a CD or flash drive) but not when booting. If you get that when you are trying to boot, something definitely went wrong. You might try running unetbootin again or at least try to boot again and note the errors you get as the more details you can give the more likely someone can help.

Something similar to this happened to me a while back. As it all turned out I had a faulty version of unetbootin; a fresh download fixed me all up.

Try the live (as opposed to the installer) disk of Salix. That doesn't use unetbootin: the iso contains Linux and Windows programs to make it bootable. If that doesn't work, it may be your computer.
http://people.salixos.org/tsuren/doc...x_Live_USB_Key

I downloaded another version of Unetbootin and installed an ISO image of Linux Mint 13 but still had the same issue.

@pcfast:
The error message that you're getting is clearly saying that your system can boot from USB, but USB doesn't contain files needed for boot from the USB. You should either try some other distro, or use some other utility to extract the OS image into USB, like Universal USB installer.

I tried the YUMI installer but it didn't work either.

For the EEEPC this applies:You boot from USB by plugging in the USB device then changing the boot order of the hard drives to put it first (I'm typing this on an EEEPC which I have booted from a few USB sticks).

I know how to change the boot order in BIOS.

You're lucky then. I spent a while changing the boot order to boot USB first and wondering why my USB sticks were broken.

Trying out Linux Mint on my laptop from the USB. Not sure why it is working now but I downloaded the ISO and then put it on using Unetbootin erasing Puppy Linux.

Was not aware of that issue with Asus EeePC's boot order. So I do the boot order setting the HD first?