Ubuntu – Cannot boot from USB created by Startup Disk Creator

Some older machines will not boot USB flash drives that have a partition table, only hard drives.

To format a USB flash drive as a "floppy" you can do this:

sudo mkfs -t vfat /dev/sdb

Note that you're putting the vfat file system on the whole device, no partitions. Then run the Startup Disk Creator to copy files over and make the stick bootable. (But don't tell it to erase the disk!)

If your other machines refuse to boot from the stick because they expect a USB floppy, then this should do it.

If not, then I'm out of help. :(

Try doing it another way. First, determine what device node your USB stick is (usually /dev/sdb unless you have another storage device plugged in or multiple hard drives).

(To verify, you can open the Disks application that comes with Ubuntu, find your disk and click it, then look right under it for the device node.)

All you have to do now is open a terminal with Ctrl+Alt+T and run

sudo  dd  if=/path/to/ubuntu.iso  of=/dev/sdX  bs=8M

where /path/to/ubuntu.iso is the actual path to the Ubuntu ISO and /dev/sdX is your USB stick device node. That never failed me.