Laptop will not pick up USB boot device.

[Ajfer03]

So I have an Acer Aspire One for repair. It has 360 GB of storage, 1GB of RAM and a 1 GHZ CPU (I know). The problem with this device is every time I make a bootable USB and try booting off of it from the laptop, all I get is, No Boot device Detected. -- Please Restart device. I needed to wipe the hard drive due to there being total data corruption on the hard drive. Since the computers performance is very limited, I decided to install windows XP, it didn't detect this drive so I moved things around in the BIOS. Still didn't boot off the drive. I continued this process all the way up to windows 7 ultimate. I have also tried linux mint. I have yet to try any other OS. Any help?

[patio]

How are you buildin these bootable stiks ? ?

Did you set USB as 1st on boot order in BIOS ?? ?

[Ajfer03]

Since the Laptop has no CD drive, I usually copy the files from CD to USB. Worked on other laptops for me. And yes, I have the start sequence as, USB HDD, USB CD, USB FDD, ATAPI CD, HDD, Atheros LAN boot Agent.

[patio]

Thats why it's not booting...

You cannot simply copy a CD to USB and expect it to boot...

[Ajfer03]

Yeah I caught myself right there, I just used rufus and I' going to let you know if it works. Thanks

[Geek-9pm]

You might try this.( You may to use another computer.)
Prepare a Linux version to boot from USB.  . Test it on other computer.
Remove hard drive from bad computer. Insert USB with Linux and power on. It ought to go to the USB device.

Can you get that far? ?If not, the laptop may have something more than a corrupt hard drive.  Also, many modern laptops will not boot from USB except under very special settings. This was done to reduce unauthorized hacking.

[Ajfer03]

Thanks all, it works now!