Like many I ran into this problem trying to boot to a USB flash drive on a new build with a Gigabyte 880GM-UD2H motherboard. However unlike a lot of folks out there I had access to several computers and several flash drives of various capacity from several manufactures for testing. SO After 5 hours of searching forums with no solution in sight I stumbled upon k9warze's suggestion and set to work testing it.
Background:
Drives:
Sandisk Cruzer Micro 4GB (X4)
Sandisk Cruzer Micro 2GB (X1)
Patriot 8GB (X10)
All of our Patriot sticks were initially set up with UBCD using a Linux Mint 10 HD install with UNetbootn (formated with Gparted). All failed to boot the system.
Configuration attempts:
USB Legacy:Disabled/Enabled
USB Mass Storage: Disabled/Enabled
Boot Priority: 1st USB HDD
F12 boot menu USB HDD, USB CD ROM, USB FDD, +Hard Drive
No combination of BIOS settings or boot menu options would work. All attempts yielded the same "Starting Operating System...Boot Error" :heink: message.
Several of the Sandisk Cruzer 4GB sticks had been configured as Windows 7 installation media using Windows 7 disk manager to format them to NTFS, and using the Microsoft USB/DVD download tool. These sticks booted perfectly from the F12 menu.
The 2GB Sandisk Cruzer had been configured with DRBL using Linux Mint 10 HD install with UNetbootn (formated with Gparted). It also failed in the exact same way as the other sticks formated with Gparted.
Solution:
On a system running Windows 7 all sticks in question were formated using Disk Manager to either NTFS (for Windows boot media) or Fat32 (for Linux based boot media). After the sticks were formated, the ones that would be receiving Windows media (iso) were configured on Windows with the Microsoft USB/DVD download tool. The others were configured with Linux media on a Linux Mint 10 system with Unetbootn. The Linux sticks were NOT reformatted with gparted or any other Linux based tools.
After formating and configuring the sticks all were tested against two identical systems with the Gigabyte 880GM-UD2H, with optimized defaults set in the bios. From the F12 menu all drives appeared under the "+Hard Disk" section and booted the system as intended!!!!!
Conclusion:
Based on the testing I did tonight I'm fairly sure that the problem and the solution are one in the same. Award must be using a Microsoft provided MBR driver, or mounting system of some sort. So long as you work with in that system your fine (by formating your sticks using Windows). As soon as you step outside that box (with a new stick that was formated via a UNIX or Linux system) your screwed. Anyway hopefully this info helps. If it does and anyone else can confirm that this works I'd appreciate it...as I'm sure would others.
