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I have use the start up disc creator in Ubuntu 18.04 to make a bootable USB to install an OS on a pc. Unfortunatly when I plug in the drive the PC will not boot from the drive. I have tried 3 different OS's including Ubuntu 16, 18, and Mint 19 and none of them will boot properly. I tried 4 different USB drive and still having problems with drives not booting. Am I doing something wrong or is there a problem with the startup disk creator? I appriciate any assistance. :)

MrMcDud
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  • What happens on boot? Did change the boot order in the bios? – pLumo Dec 20 '18 at 15:59
  • RoVo that was the first thing I did. Once I get past the cmos screen all I get is a black screen with no indication the computer is reading the drive at all. – MrMcDud Dec 20 '18 at 16:14
  • 1. Did you check that the downloading process finished correctly? You can [use `md5sum` for that purpose](https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UbuntuHashes); 2. Please tell us about the computer (name and model). – sudodus Dec 20 '18 at 16:23
  • Sudodus I just checked it and its saying it completed correctly. I also made sure that the USB plug on the pc was working properly. – MrMcDud Dec 20 '18 at 16:29
  • That's good. What about the computer name and model? – sudodus Dec 20 '18 at 16:32
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    Sudodus its an AMD Athelon mini ATX board. Single core with 8gigs of DDR-2 ram. – MrMcDud Dec 20 '18 at 16:37
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    Have you tried the [boot menu key](https://kb.wisc.edu/page.php?id=58779). – Vijay Dec 20 '18 at 17:03
  • So it should be able to boot from a USB drive made from a 64-bit Ubuntu iso file. - I agree with @Vijay, that you should look into the booting: the BIOS menus and/or hotkeys, how to make it boot from your USB pendrive. Maybe the pendrive is seen as another hard disk drive (change the boot order). - You can also check in another computer, that your pendrives are bootable. – sudodus Dec 20 '18 at 17:12
  • Vijay yes I did. Bios and boot setting are set up properly. Its just acting like the bootable USB is not there. I did get the computer running but now I have my laptop hard drive in a desktop machine. Unfortunatly the desktop is a machine I'm fixing for a friend and they are not getting my laptop drive. Could this be a problem with my version of 18.04? I have had a lot of problems since I upgraded from 16. – MrMcDud Dec 20 '18 at 17:13

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You tried 3 different OS's including Ubuntu 16, 18, and Mint 19 and none of them would boot properly. So I think the problem is not Ubuntu 18.04 LTS. The following link may help, Booting the Computer from USB.

Maybe I was mislead by the information about the motherboard via the internet stating that 64-bit versions should work. Maybe you should try a 32 bit version of Lubuntu or Xubuntu.

I have two old machines with Athlon CPUs. One of them has an ASUS M2NVM_DVI motherboard, and I have tested several Lubuntu iso files on it including the 18.04.1 LTS and 18.10. Booting and running works.

You can try cloning the working operating system borrowed from your laptop (source) to the drive that is dedicated for the problematic machine (target), if the target is at least as big as the source (storagewise).

See this link: Cloning from one drive to another drive

sudodus
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    Sudodus I got the OS working but I had to burn a DVD to install it. For some reason the USB still won't boot. But thanks for the help I really do appreciate all the suggestions. – MrMcDud Dec 20 '18 at 20:31
  • @MrMcDud, I'm glad you found a solution. Congratulations :-) You can write an answer yourself and 'accept' it (click the tick icon) to indicate that there is a solution that really works. – sudodus Dec 20 '18 at 20:34
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Ubuntu Startup Creator can generally make other Ubuntu startup USBs. However, I recently found I couldn't make a Centos USB using the Ubuntu Startup disk creator. I used dd if=/path/to/Cento.iso of=/dev/sdb status=progress. Note that the destination device is the device, not a partition on the device.

user38537
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