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I followed all the instructions to create a bootable USB drive so I can try Ubuntu without actually installing it on my Windows 7 machine. Everything seemed to be going ok but now it appears to be "stuck" and I can't tell if it's doing anything or not. The extract window has been at 99% for 20 mins now and says it has 1 error - "cannot open outfile autorun.inf."

The universal USB installer window just says to be patient and the progress bar will not move until the installation is complete. My USB stick looks like it is just "Idling" and not trying to do anything. I see a bunch of Ubuntu files have been installed on it but I have no idea of its actually done or not since the progress bar is not moving. How much longer should I wait before I try to start over? Is there anything I can do to find out if the installation is actually still working or has it frozen up and I need to just start over? Should this be a 5-10 min job or is this something that takes hours to do?

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  • That doesn't seem right. You should take at most 15min to install Ubuntu on an USB-drive; Try Unetbootin as suggested by @karel
    – MrVaykadji
    Mar 16, 2014 at 15:27

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UNetbootin is an application in the Ubuntu Software Center that does the same thing as Universal USB Installer if you want to try it using a different app. There is also a version of UNetbootin for Windows. I have also seen UNetbootin stall at 99% more than once for about 2-3 minutes, but it didn't give any error message and it always finished after that.

Should this be a 5-10 minute job or is this something that takes hours to do?

Yes, it should be a 5-10 minute job from start to finish, including the wait at the end.

UNetbootin has been dropped from the Ubuntu 18.04 repositories. When I tested the built-in Startup Disk Creator application in Ubuntu 18.04 as a UNetbootin replacement app with 5 different non-*buntu live .iso images it worked every time.

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If you're under Windows try Lili-USB Creator. It's the best tool I found under Windows to make bootable USB Disks from Ubuntu .iso files. You can also try burning .img files directly to usb with a tool like Win32 DisK Image.

Under Ubuntu for .iso files there is the Startup Disk Creator and for .img file simply burn by:

dd if=/path/to/downloaded.img of=/dev/sdX bs=1M

(LEARN ABOUT dd PRIOR TO USING IT: THINGS MAY TURN REALLY BAD!)

You can find all the .iso and .img files to download in http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/releases

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Thank you for your responses...it turns out that once I clicked on the "close" button on the 99% complete extract dialog box it finished up without an issue. So the trick is to know that closing the extraction dialog box, once the extract timer shows "0" time left, even if it does not show 100% complete is how you have to end the program. So 99% complete for extraction seems to mean "I'm done with the extract so click on the close button and then I will be 100% complete"

Thank again! Steve

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    That is pretty strange and not how it should behave if it really did. :/
    – jobin
    Mar 17, 2014 at 16:13
  • I agree...not the way I would have expected it to end the program...:)
    – user258852
    Mar 18, 2014 at 17:34

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