I had trouble getting EFI Ubuntu installed, until I got the 64 bit iso. Now I want my usb stick back. I cannot copy anything to it. gparted cannot help me, it stays ro, I cannot copy anything to it.

gparted asked me if I knew whether it was gpt. I clicked yes, although I wasn't sure.

What where is telling Ubuntu that this stick is read only? I can't see any flags to change.

I thought I could create a 32 bit start up disk. That has always be writeable, but now startup disk creator can't do it, I get

org.freedesktop.DBus.Python.AttributeError: Traceback (most recent call last):

The owner is Me, but when I try and change the permissions to rw, it says

Sorry, could not change the permissions of Ubuntu 14.04.2 LTS amd64: Error setting permissions: Read-only file system

How to get my stick back??

hi,
I think...you're not the owner of the thing (anymore)...
Some tech background. Say you use the stick on system A, and you have ID 1000, and "oops" the system goes dead, install a new system but...that system assigns you an other ID, say 1002...bamm...
Option (I do that all the time, I have an ext HD that I drag along since some five re-installs and different boxes) is to reassign ownership...
Mount the stick, go into Root mode and use the chown command...
Luck
Thor

I didn't understand OP post's but is he trying to create new partitions with gparted erasing old ones. And he can't do it.

If so, OP can just write zero's to start of the usb drive.

And then try.

Be carefull to use the RIGHT disk, if there is a spare PC around, do it on THAT one, the danger to write on the main disk is not that remote...just me, rambling...

One has to see dmesg output carefully after inserting the usb disk to see which block device is associated.

Ok, here is soem output

root@pedro-bedro2:/home/pedro# ls -al /media/pedro/Ubuntu\ 14.04.2\ LTS\ amd64
total 2556
dr-xr-xr-x 1 pedro pedro 2048 2 19 04:11 .
drwxr-x---+ 3 root root 4096 3 9 15:59 ..
-r--r--r-- 1 pedro pedro 134 2 19 04:08 autorun.inf
dr-xr-xr-x 1 pedro pedro 2048 2 19 04:11 boot
dr-xr-xr-x 1 pedro pedro 2048 2 19 04:11 casper
dr-xr-xr-x 1 pedro pedro 2048 2 19 04:11 .disk
dr-xr-xr-x 1 pedro pedro 2048 2 19 04:10 dists
dr-xr-xr-x 1 pedro pedro 2048 2 19 04:11 EFI
dr-xr-xr-x 1 pedro pedro 2048 2 19 04:11 install
dr-xr-xr-x 1 pedro pedro 18432 2 19 04:11 isolinux
-r--r--r-- 1 pedro pedro 21438 2 19 04:11 md5sum.txt
dr-xr-xr-x 1 pedro pedro 2048 2 19 04:10 pics
dr-xr-xr-x 1 pedro pedro 2048 2 19 04:10 pool
dr-xr-xr-x 1 pedro pedro 2048 2 19 04:10 preseed
-r--r--r-- 1 pedro pedro 231 2 19 04:10 README.diskdefines
lr-xr-xr-x 1 pedro pedro 1 2 19 04:10 ubuntu -> .
-r--r--r-- 1 pedro pedro 2551408 4 15 2014 wubi.exe
root@pedro-bedro2:/home/pedro#

And here is some more:

root@pedro-bedro2:/home/pedro# chown root /media/pedro/Ubuntu\ 14.04.2\ LTS\ amd64
chown: changing ownership of /media/pedro/Ubuntu 14.04.2 LTS amd64: Read-only file system

How can I change the owner of a file system that root cannot alter??

I made this boot stick on this computer.

root@pedro-bedro2:/home/pedro# dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb bs=1M count=1
1+0 records in
1+0 records out
1048576 bytes (1.0 MB) copied, 0.0099198 s, 106 MB/s
root@pedro-bedro2:/home/pedro#

Something to do with is being formatted to fit in with EFI firmware boot

Can you now run parted with it now?

don't know much about computers. Would I have parted? Just entered parted in the terminal, nothing hapened

I have parted running

I entered select /dev/sdb

Don't know what was wrong. I put it in the new laptop, reformatted ok!

your laptop????????????????????????????????

Either use parted or gparted.

OP: Did your original problem got solved or not?

No, not the laptop!

No, problem remains. In the new laptop I could format it using gparted, and give it a label. Just can't use it as it remains ro.