Wont boot from USB, stops at SYSLINUX copyright

Created bootable 11.10 in Windows from Universal USB Installer 1.8.6.8, upon boot in my HP Mini Netbook it displays only this:

SYSLINUX 4.04 EDD 2011-04-18 Copyright (C) 1994-2011 H. Peter Anvin et al
_(Blinky Cursor)

I tried removing "ui" from syslinux.cfg, no change... (Re: can't install with usb pen drive, SYSLINUX problem)

I also tried creating a bootable USB using unetbootin-windows-563, no change.

Does anybody have any other ideas?

Solution 1:

I was having this same issue trying to install Ubuntu on my 2008 HP laptop. Make sure USB is formatted FAT32 or NTFS first. I actually tried both with no success. I also tried a few different Linux distros and multiple Linux USB creators. All gave me the same message on boot. After tinkering with the BIOS and boot order, I finally gave up and decided to blame HP, since all the boot USBs I made worked fine on my desktop pc.

I finally decided to burn the ISO to a DVD and try to boot from my external USB cd/DVD drive and everything worked fine!

Solution 2:

I was having the same issue and I just had to change the syslinux.cfg by replacing this line (usually, line 2) to the default instruction:

prompt 1

Then on the boot just prompt the menu label you want to launch, in my case it was :

ubnentry1

Solution 3:

Go to the isolinux folder on your usb stick, open isolinux.cfg with notepad and replace everything with

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect` 

It is from Windows XP and it worked for me.