USB startup thumb drive fails to boot

I had a similar experience with i386, but it just told me "No operating system" when I tried to boot from the usb stick.

I had similar experience with Xubuntu 8.10 image. Installations was fine but booting gave me weired ASCI caracters and got stuck, not even the boot screen.

I get the same message, "No operating system on thumb drive" or something like that. Does anyone have an answer. I know this, when I go to properties on the thumb drive, it says file system is msdos. Also, when I look at it with partition editor, it says it has a fat32 file system. Could this be causing some problems? It shouldn't. Help.

I've just had a similiar problem I think. I used the GUI to try to create a bootable USB on Ubuntu 8.10 i386 running as a live CD. (Dell Inspiron 640m, new - but possibly fake - Kingston DataTraveller 2GB USB flash drive). The bios hangs with the message "Invalid or corrupt boot sector".

Can you try re-creating the bootable usb? Also, please make sure you provide us with the exact error message you got!

I think (in my case) the problem was the boot record on the USB stick. I used Puppy Linux to set itself up for booting off the same USB stick. This failed to boot with the same message "Invalid or corrupt boot sector".

In the Puppy Linux wizard, there's an option to replace the boot sector. Since the boot sector seemed to be at fault, I replaced it with the syslinux version (which Puppy Linux suggests works best). Puppy Linux booted, so I just retried with Ubuntu 8.10 - on the same stick, after deleting the Puppy files- which also worked.

It seems that the Ubuntu USB creation wizard doesn't touch the boot sector. Which is fine most of the time, but apparently not always:
http://www.pendrivelinux.com/install-a-new-mbr-to-your-usb-flash-device/.
Kingston USB drives are quite popular, the problem could be common.

A similiar option to replace the MBR, along with some advice about when to use it, in the Ubuntu USB-creator GUI could save other neophytes some headscratching...

What brand USB key did you try? I've had varying levels of success with different flash media. That may help narrow down the problem.

I used an Attaché 8Gig

I've experienced this from Jaunty, installing the x86 live-CD image to an 8GB Freecom device.

[ 817.073840] scsi 6:0:0:0: Direct-Access Freecom DataBar USB2.0 1100 PQ: 0 ANSI: 0 CCS
[ 817.079438] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] 15858688 512-byte hardware sectors: (8.11 GB/7.56 GiB)

cat /proc/scsi/usb-storage/6
   Host scsi6: usb-storage
       Vendor: Freecom
      Product: DataBar USB2.0
Serial Number: 907707000122
     Protocol: Transparent SCSI
    Transport: Bulk
       Quirks:

hwinfo --disk
26: SCSI 600.0: 10600 Disk
  [Created at block.243]
  UDI: /org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/storage_serial_Freecom_DataBar_USB2_0_907707000122_0_0
  Unique ID: 2UT6.SK6zEDiUeLA
  Parent ID: 5YuN.xDTFH3PCKj0
  SysFS ID: /class/block/sdb
  SysFS BusID: 6:0:0:0
  SysFS Device Link: /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.7/usb1/1-3/1-3:1.0/host6/target6:0:0/6:0:0:0
  Hardware Class: disk
  Model: "Freecom DataBar USB2.0"
  Vendor: usb 0x07ab "Freecom"
  Device: usb 0xfcf6 "DataBar USB2.0"
  Revision: "1100"
  Serial ID: "907707000122"
  Driver: "usb-storage", "sd"
  Driver Modules: "usb_storage"
  Device File: /dev/sdb (/dev/sg2)
  Device Number: block 8:16-8:31 (char 21:2)
  Features: Hotpluggable
  Speed: 480 Mbps
  Module Alias: "usb:v07ABpFCF6d1100dc00dsc00dp00ic08isc06ip50"
  Drive status: no medium
  Config Status: cfg=new, avail=yes, need=no, active=unknown
  Attached to: #13 (USB Controller)

It is very difficult to catch the BIOS message when the laptop fails to boot from the device since the hard-disk's GRUB is booted immediately after and clears the BIOS screen almost instantly. It seems to be something like "Operating system not found".

The device boots fine in a KVM/Qemu virtual machine using: kvm -hda /dev/sdb ...

I've tried the device in two laptops/notebooks that are USB-boot capable with the same failure.

I'm wondering if this is related to how the PC's BIOS initialises the host controller(s) and port(s). On most PCs there will be both full-speed (USB1.1) and high-speed (USB2.0) host controllers. Depending on which one is initialised by the BIOS (I'm guessing USB1.1 since that has been around longer) then the USB Device descriptor reported by the device will be for USB1.1 which could be different to the USB2.0 descriptor shown in the lsusb output attached.

If I remove the hard drive from the system, rather than just change the BIOS boot order so USB is tried first, The USB device boots successfully.

I suspect my issue is more accurately related to bug #277903 "Missing Operating System [message at boot]". This messages is written by the syslinux MBR code when it can't find the second stage code in the bootable file-system.

In the process of investigating this issue I discovered this boot-device issue which suggests a BIOS bug. The affected Sony Vaio has a Phoenix BIOS.

It suggests that when the syslinux MBR (Master Boot Record) code asks the BIOS to read the first sector from the bootable partition (the file-system's boot-loader code) one of two things might be happening:

1. BIOS passes the wrong drive number to the boot-loader as part of the PnP header (available in DL when execution is passed to the MBR from BIOS along with the PnP header at ES:DI)
2. BIOS ignores the drive number passed (in DL) to int 0x13 (Read sector)

The "missing operating system" isssue fixed via a patch added in bug #277903 "Missing Operating System [message at boot]" for the syslinux package.

The very first time i used the startup disk creator it made a successful install to a 8gb pny attache usb stick and was
able to use it to install to my r61e lennovo laptop. Now I have tried without success to use 8gb, 4gb, 1gb sticks they
all get created and appear to work but it always drops me to a intramfs shell. I have followed the wiki for debuging
this and am including the casper and dmesg logs.
lsb_release -rd
Description: Ubuntu 9.04
Release: 9.04
sudo dpkg -l |grep usb-creator
ii usb-creator 0.1.15
I also tried using unetbooten-linux-319 but it fails the same way, except it has yet to work wereas i was successfull
when i created it for the first time (after my initial Jaunty 9.04 Ubuntu download)

My issue was fixed in jaunty 9.04 bug 276822, they added two files, lupin-casper and ubiquity-casper
dpkg -l |grep casper
ii casper 1.173 Run a "live" preinstalled system from read-o
ii lupin-casper 0.22 Add support for loop-mount installations to
ii ubiquity-casper 1.173

papukaija.

I think this ought to be marked Incomplete (and ask for more details)
since the original bug report is against 8.10 and reports a keyboard
error ("incorrect keyboard configuration"). It doesn't detail precisely
when that error occurs or where it comes from - is the before or after
the languages chooser, for example.

It could be an issue with syslinux (the boot-loader) or casper (the
live-CD environment) but is unlikely to be usbcreator since the image
itself was created.

It might be wise to alter the bug title to focus on the original
keyboard issue since otherwise it covers a wide range of other bugs, as
can be seen from the different causes/fixes already commented.

Ken,

At what point in the boot do you see this "incorrect keyboard configuration" error? Could you please take a screenshot of it.

Also, does this bug still occur with usb-creator 0.2.7 (from Karmic)?

Thanks!

As far as I can tell, all the other issues reported are not the same bug as the original comment. Therefore, would the other individuals who have commented on this bug please try with usb-creator 0.2.7 and create new bug reports if they're still having problems.

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better.
We are closing this bug report because it lacks the information we need to investigate the problem, as described in the previous comments. Please reopen it if you can give us the missing information, and don't hesitate to submit bug reports in the future.
To reopen the bug report you can click on the current status, under the Status column, and change the Status back to "New".