[Solved] AAO won't boot from USB anymore

In my never-ending search for the lightest-but-still-nice-to-look-at distro for the AAO, I've run into a bit of a hiccup. I can't get the darn thing to boot from USB anymore. I flashed the BIOS (v.3310) before an Arch install, for whatever that's worth. I've tried a number of different methods of preparing the USB stick (unetbootin; format with gparted, flag as bootable, dd the .iso; liveusb) and three different USB sticks, all different brands and sizes, two of which were brand new, on the off chance that the AAO was quirky about what it boots from. 99% of the time, after F12 -> select USB, it just boots the native OS normally. The other 1% of the time it fails to boot at all 'cause I've prepped the stick incorrectly :lol:

Any idea why it won't boot from USB? I've finally got a little scratch pulled together to upgrade the SSD and RAM. I'll start with a fresh OS install (either Peppermint or Mint 9 - LXDE) after the hardware upgrades, but I obviously can't do that if I can't boot from USB.

 

Re: AAO won't boot from USB anymore

For the record, it won't boot from an external USB-DVD drive, either. :cry:

 

Re: AAO won't boot from USB anymore

Update:

If I boot another Aspire One ZG5 with an external USB-DVD drive first, then the problematic AAO will boot from it. But ProblemAAO will not boot with anything other than the SSD unless I go through the process of booting another machine with the external drive first.

I have not tested that theory with USB drives, but I assume it's going to be the same deal. Is this a BIOS issue? GRUB? What say you?

 

Re: AAO won't boot from USB anymore

I'm bumping my own old thread, in hopes that someone will have some input.

Bueller? Bueller?

 

Operator error. Go figure.