# Solved: problem booting from USB



## asaaki (Mar 25, 2009)

my laptop originally ran on Windows XP. I recently shut it down by pressing the power button directly and when I turned it on the next time, it showed me a blue screen and then went into a restart loop.

I've tried reinstalling Windows but none of the CD's I have work. I've decided to boot from USB in order to install Linux. I used another laptop to do that... I'm a complete newbie though, so I don't know if my own laptop was 32-bit or 64-bit, I just downloaded the latest version of Ubuntu, 32-bit, and mounted on my USB. There were problems with that, too, the Archive Manager on this laptop (which runs on Ubuntu) said there was an error: the image was too old or something. Anyway that done, I finally managed to make the laptop boot from the USB without _Disk Error: File not found_ showing up.

But now when I boot from it, the screen says



> SYSLINUX 3.63 Debian-2008-07-15 EBIOS Copyright (c) 1994-2008 H. Peter Anvin
> boot:


I guess I should type something there because the cursor keeps blinking but I don't exactly know what to do now.

Also syslinux.cfg is an empty file. When I put the following in it



> # D-I config version 2.0
> include menu.cfg
> default vesamenu.c32
> prompt 0
> ...


 and saved it, I got a* busybox v1.17.1 ubuntu* screen with a list of commands popping up after I typed 'help'. I didn't know what to do with any of those commands either 
Help, please?


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## arochester (Jan 17, 2007)

It sounds like a bad "burn".

Put the ISO on the USB stick with unetbootin. It can be done from Windows or Linux - http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/ .

From my experience unetbootin may leave "bits" so format the USB first...


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## asaaki (Mar 25, 2009)

thank you! it works now!


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