I wanted to install MX-14 on a machine with a GByte GA-MA785GMTUD2H AMD785G SB710 motherboard. Clearly booting from a usb would make the job significantly faster than using a cd.
I checked the boot options in the BIOS and they were already set to my personal preference, usb, cd then the first hd. However, the mobo has a list a long as your arm of possible usb options - and none of them worked! (I saw it look it both the cd drives then start to boot from the hd)

I have very recently installed MX-14 on a friends pretty old machine (certainly older than mine!) so i know that the stick is ok, it's just that i could not seem to find the right"flavour" of usb device.

Is there some sort of list of what order to try the various usb options? Or even a"this is more likely to work than that one"? Or any advice you could give me, please?

p.s.
Posted here for continuity (issue referred to in a previous post)

I've found that about 1/2 or 2/3 of the sticks can't be used to boot from.

My solution is to keep the ones that can boot separate and use the others just to store data backups and transfers.

I also lean towards ones where you can insert a chip into it so I can just have a bunch of chips and put them in a USB reader device that will boot.

Answer: When its a hard drive!

I have a sibling of that same motherboard. It treats the usb stick as a HARD DRIVE rather than a usb device. what you need to do, with the stick plugged in, is change the boot order of the hard drives. the stick should show up in the list (probably last). just move it to the top. I'm not sure if you have to do this with every stick (or maybe every brand) but my sandisk that I typically use does stick from boot to boot.

If D.O.'s solution does not work then you can do a hybrid boot. Create a LiveCD from the same iso file you used to make the LiveUSB. Plug in the LiveUSB, boot the LiveCD and select the"from usb" option in the"F4 Options" menu. If it is not there, type in the boot parameter"from=usb".

With just a LiveCD alone, the"toram" option will make it run very fast (after the initial delay when the compressed file system gets copied to RAM). The"Frugal Install" option will also make it run very fast. There is still the delay of copying the compressed file system but in this case it gets copied to your hard drive instead of RAM so it only has to be copied once, not every time you boot. Think of"Frugal Install" as a"to disk" option analogous to the more traditional"toram" option. You can also enable root and home persistence during a frugal install. This lets you install and boot into a fully functional installed (frugal) system in just a few minutes. If you are looking for a very speedy install, this is the way to go.

You can also do a frugal install from the LiveUSB. You might not believe how fast it is.