Linux – Can’t boot from USB to install Linux

After having a lot of failures with unetbootin (I haven't the foggiest why people still recommend it), I found that with some work you can actually does this pretty easily.

You'll need a program capable of exactly copying a partition or drive, bit for bit, including the Master Boot Record. Some are included with Windows that supposedly work, I use a complicated VMWare method, and there are plenty of others (free and not) available. Just Google "disk drive cloners" (sorry, I don't have any recommendations).

You'll also need a program capable of mounting an ISO as a disc drive. Daemon Tools Lite (an early version without ads) works perfectly.

All you need to do is mount the disc image as a drive and clone that drive/partition to your flash drive. Works perfectly most of the time and is lightning fast (not as fast as unetbootin, but then again, it works).

I've tested the method on Windows, DOS, Ubuntu, Puppy Linux, GPartEd and CloneZilla, and Mac OS X. Worked great on all of them. As long as your system can boot from USB, it should work. There may be issues if it isn't capable of reading a CD filesystem in the BIOS, but if the BIOS can boot from CD and USB (but no CD hardware exists), you should still be fine.

However, you may want to check and make sure your Solaris image is valid. A corrupt kernel error is often the result of a bad disc image. It's not a big deal on flash drives you can re-write, but if nothing works and you keep getting the error, double-check the image.

I did this once with a computer. I had no DVD or USB with me, so this is what I did.

1. Download the iso from DigitalRiver.
2. Open Disk Management (diskmgmt.msc).
3. Shrink your current drive by 5GB.
4. Format the unallocated space in NTFS.
5. Assign it a drive letter. I recommend using Z:, as it is easy to remember and to use.
6. Extract the files in the ISO using 7z to your new partition you just created.
7. Using EasyBCD, go to the "Add New Entry" tab.
8. Click on WinPE.
9. Give your boot entry a name. I used Windows 7 Installation
10. In the third box, select YourDrive:\Sources\Boot.wim
11. Save it.
12. Reboot.
13. When the boot menu comes up, select the entry you created using EasyBCD.
14. When the installation screen comes up, follow the instructions.
15. Enjoy your Windows 7 installation.

Note: During the installation, I wiped my other partitions and installed it on the wiped partitions. If you want to upgrade, select upgrade instead of Custom.