14

I've installed Ubuntu by USB many times before. It's not working now and I'm not sure why.

I format the USB drive (a Kingston DataTraveler 100 G2, 16 GB) using GParted by wiping it and installing a FAT32 primary partition on it. I change the permissions of the drive filesystem from root to the main user (sudo chown user1: /media/user1/4B8C-3997). I download Ubuntu (wget http://mirror.switch.ch/ftp/mirror/ubuntu-cdimage/15.10/ubuntu-15.10-desktop-amd64.iso) and then write the ISO to USB using UNetbootin. Then, when I try to boot from the drive, it simply loops back to asking which drive to boot from.

Do you have any ideas about what might be causing this?

5 Answers 5

19

Unetbootin does not create the Ubuntu installation media properly.
Use the Disks tool (gnome-disk-utility) to create the USB media.

Open Disks, select Restore Disk Image from the menu on the top right.
Choose the ISO file and the USB drive to write it to and start restoring.

When you want to create the installation media from within Windows,
boot Windows, open command prompt as administrator and execute :

diskpart
list disk  
select disk *  
clean  
create partition primary  
active  
format fs=fat32 quick  
assign letter=**  

Note : * = number of USB drive | ** = select a free drive letter
Now mount the ISO file and copy the content to the USB disk.

4
  • Does opening as administrator make a difference?
    – 54D
    Apr 18, 2016 at 12:00
  • 2
    @ArceusMaster0493 : You cannot use the Windows diskpart tool as a normal user, because you need to have elevated privileges to work on disks - so you will have to execute the commands as administrator. :)
    – cl-netbox
    Apr 18, 2016 at 12:09
  • 5
    Can you at least explain why unetbootin doesn't work ? as it is actually supposed to..
    – Matt
    Dec 5, 2018 at 8:59
  • Holy, wasted so much time trying to flash iso and it is that easy.
    – Artem P
    Dec 10, 2022 at 23:53
3

Use this git clone for a faster bootable usb creator.

git clone git://github.com/pbatard/rufus

Alternative Windows mirror: https://github.com/pbatard/rufus/archive/v2.8.zip

It can also format the partition to FAT32 easily

0

If you want to boot from USB and you are prepared to wipe all existing contents from the USB device, there is a much simpler way:

cat ubuntu-15.10-desktop-amd64.iso >/dev/sdx

Where /dev/sdx is the device name of the USB media. Be very careful because a small typo in this command could wipe your hard drive.

This works because the Ubuntu ISO images utilize the free space at the start of any ISO image to include a partition table and boot loader suitable for booting from USB.

It is also possible to partition the USB device manually, create a file system, copy the ISO file to that file system, install a boot loader, create a boot menu entry to boot from the ISO file. But performing all of these steps manually is more work, and it is easy to make mistakes meaning you have to try a few times before you get the system to boot.

0

I was having the same problem on Mac, and I believe it was because of how I'd formatted my USB stick. Originally I had just created a partition as FAT and was able to load many different ISOs onto the device. Then I made a mistake and had to re-format(?) the whole device, which included re-making the file/partition table. Originally I just chose the default "Scheme", "GUID Partition Map". From this point on I was having trouble. I had a hunch that it might require the "Master Boot Record" scheme, so I erased the whole USB stick again with that setting. Then when I ran unetbootin again it worked without issue.

what's more, if unetbootin is still not working with you, then change to another tools like SYSGeeker's WonderISO or rufus.

0

I think Etcher is worth a mention and works on all platforms.

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