I have been trying to run Fedora 16 off of a live USB on a Gateway T-Series notebook. I have downloaded the official fedora ISO file from the website, I have a 8 GB flash drive (haven't a clue what brand, I threw away the packaging) that I formatted as FAT32. I then opened Fedora Live USB creator, and made the live USB. It said that it was successful, but on reboot, after I went into the bios of the system, and selecting "USB HDD 2.0" as the first thing in boot priority, I saved the changes, and the little light on the USB stick came on, and once the system gets past the Gateway logo page, it just goes to a dark grey screen with a blinking cursor in the top left corner. I have tried to make a Fedora Live USB with Ubootin as well, also with FAT32 format, also did not boot. I have re-downloaded the ISO image of fedora multiple times, still nothing (it boots perfectly on the Gateway from a Live CD, but the disk drive, and the hard drive in the machine are failing). I am making the Live USB on my fiancee's PC, a Lenovo 1450 notebook, just so it is told what computer is making the live USB. I hope that someone can help me, and thank you in advance for reading this.

Gateways T-Series started shipping in 2007 so they aren't that old hardware-wise (Centrino or Core2, 1GB RAM, 160GB SATA disk). As you stated the disk is failing I would suggest turning the logo off in the BIOS and instead opt for the standard boot-up diagnosis screen as it's better to see what's going on. When you boot Fedora does it reach the screen where you can choose boot options or does it go blank immediately? If it does it reach the boot options screen can you make it use text-based install instead of the default graphical installation? Else, when you use a Fedora Live CD, can you get a login to save 'dmesg' and 'lspci -vvv' information?

First thing is to test usb on some other system.

Try this also. Turn off system completely. Remove ac plug and battery. Press power button a few times. Then attach usb and power up to bios. Then check hard drive order. Set usb drive to priority over internal. Then let it boot.

Thank you so much for your input... I actually opted for Ubuntu 11.10 instead. I somehow got the Gateway to think my flash drive was the hard drive. I booted the live CD, and selected install. Ubuntu is now installed to my flash drive and boots perfectly... I am glad I pulled that one off, as it gives me more time to save up for a new hard drive.