Laptop will boot to some usb flash drives but not others

3

Laptop: HP Compaq 6710b

I can boot from usb just fine with the following usb flash drives:

  • Cruzer micro 4GB
  • HP 4GB

The flash drive that will not boot:

  • Flash Voyager 8GB

To knock out variables I did the following:

  • Using Hard Disk Low Level Format Tool I performed a low level format
  • Full erase with Flash Memory Tookit
  • In windows 7 I formated the drive to fat32
  • Used USB-Boot-Tester to write to the drive
  • Also used uNetbooting with various distros to see if that would make a difference

My guesses on what could be preventing the drive from booting:

  • The laptop does not support booting to usb flash drives larger than 4GB
  • The drive is defective in some way

evolvd

Posted 2010-08-22T00:24:53.627

Reputation: 155

by not boot, do you mean it freezes before booting, or dosen't boot off said drive? – Journeyman Geek – 2010-08-22T01:12:45.137

Have you checked if it is usb2.0? – Unfundednut – 2010-08-22T03:55:14.857

1>

  • By not boot I am mean that I can't boot from the usb flash drive.
  • yes it is 2.0... I never heard of a 8gb usb1.0 flash drive.
    • < – evolvd – 2010-08-22T07:25:51.750

    Answers

    0

    have you tried HPUSBFW.EXE (HP USB disk format storage tool)
    try FAT16(which it calls FAT I think), FAT32, NTFS I see it available here http://codinguniverse.com/files/HPUSBFW.EXE a slightly newer version is 2MB as oppose to 440KB.

    Or, much newer versions of the HP thing. which they call HP drive key boot utility about 44MB!

    FAT16 is limited to 2GB, so see how that goes.. try FAT32 , and try NTFS.. I haven't tried it in a long while..

    barlop

    Posted 2010-08-22T00:24:53.627

    Reputation: 18 677

    Doesn't that just format the drive? I have already tried formating with windows 7, gpart, and pargon partiton manager. – evolvd – 2010-08-22T07:28:33.553

    Have you tried formatting it as FAT16? As a test. FAT16 should I guess limit it to 2GB, and it'd be interesting if it suddenly worked when you did that. – barlop – 2010-08-22T18:38:12.660

    The only bootable usb i've ever made is a dos one.. using hpusbfw. You have to write a boot record to the usb stick.. i know you know that 'cos you did it for the other usb stick. But, make sure that whatever method you use, is tried and tested, by the fact that you know the method to work since you've used it successfully on the usb stick that works. – barlop – 2010-08-22T18:44:23.333

    Asked: 2010-08-22T00:24:53.627

    Viewed: 3 021 times

    Active: 2012-07-16T22:36:04.243