Computer thinks flash drive is CD-ROM
 

I currently have Lubuntu installed on my old Dell, but I found Sonar Linux that has everything I need for large text! :) It's an Ubuntu derivative.

The trouble is, I installed the iso onto a USB flash drive, and the computer thinks it's a CD-ROM when loading and errors about not being able to mount /dev/sdr? (whichever is the CD-ROM device name). How can I get the computer to treat the flash drive properly?

Did you just copy the *.iso to the flash drive or did you use something like Unetbootin to make the flash drive bootable?

Unetbootin works very well. I've used it to install Mint on two computers (my netbook, which had Mint 14 on it, and my girlfriend's old XP netbook) in the past three days. (I'm trying to convert her to Linux, but she works at a Microsoft shop.)

Trying it now, but I'm not sure it's working. I used Universal USB Installer to create the disk.

Just tried Unetbootin and the flash drive is still detected as an unmountable cd-rom.

I found a script on a site that describes this problem as one to do with short filenames, but it still won't work (probably because it's for Ubuntu and not the Sonar distro):

http://cirrus.ucsd.edu/~pierce/fix_ubuntu_usb/

If you used either dd or some of the live installers it will or can make the install seem like it it running from an optical media. There normally isn't a problem not being able to mount the usb as a user. You just want to run the installer from this usb.

Some of the drives like SanDisk do have a portion of the drive that is read as a cdrom but the partition will be very small. Post output of

UUI and unetbootin are both types of software which simply put a Live CD on a flash drive and make them bootable. It will behave in the same manner as a Live CD. Are you rebooting your computer with the flash plugged into a port and set to first boot priority in the BIOS?

Output of fdisk -l was nothing. I don't know why.

I'm creating the "LiveCD" in Windows 7 and then booting the USB on my Linux machine as first boot priority (over BIOS). I've used three programs now and nothing has worked. Maybe I should try creating one under Linux, but I'm so new I don't know how.

You do realize that some usb drives are recognized as hdd's. Check in bios under hdd's if it is bootable you'll see a + sign.

You need to be root. So you should really type:
Type your password (don't panic if nothing appears on the screen as you type the password- it's not suppossed to) then hit Enter. Then post the results.

Hope this helps!

Output from fdisk -l:

I think we've gotten lost here.

You created a usb. (not sure what the iso part in windows 7 is)

You booted to this usb.

Why do you care about how it see's this drive? What stops you from installing the OS?

When I try to load the kernel it gives an error message about cannot mount /dev/sdr and cycles through various drives that I can't remember, that it says it cannot mount. Then it goes into a fallback mode and ends up at a boot prompt but I don't know what it needs to run properly.

I don't think it can mount and that's why I can't load the kernel.

Thanks everyone for all the help offered. I switched to 12.04 and the install worked. I still have no idea why it wasn't working before, but I have a working OS now.

that is known as U3

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U3

Since the distro is odd/not main stream it could have any number of errors.

Not all distro's optical media works correctly by placing it on a usb.

Thanks for the update and sorry we didn't get you going.

Maybe you can borrow a usb CD/DVD drive and make a disc to install this special distro.