Cannot boot from usb

[Honeybadger191]

I just got a new laptop, I got it for free, but the hard drive is broken, so I went to best buy and bought a new hard drive, when I came home I made an ubuntu bootable usb (usb 2.0), all my ports are usb 3.0, when I selected boot from usb, it was just a black screen with a blinking underscore, do I need a usb 3.0 drive? Or whats my problem?

 

[Someone Somewhere]

USB 2.0 should work fine.

What did you use to burn the USB? You can't just copy the files onto it. Did you try it on another system?

You may need to go into the BIOS and tell it to boot from USB.

 

[Honeybadger191]

USB 2.0 should work fine.

What did you use to burn the USB? You can't just copy the files onto it. Did you try it on another system?

You may need to go into the BIOS and tell it to boot from USB.

I used unetbootin with ubuntu 14.04, i put usb as 1st boot priority but i will force boot from usb and see what happens

 

[Honeybadger191]

USB 2.0 should work fine.

What did you use to burn the USB? You can't just copy the files onto it. Did you try it on another system?

You may need to go into the BIOS and tell it to boot from USB.

Okay i selected Boot from USB and all I get is "Reboot and select proper boot device", I only have the mac im writing this on to test it, kinda stuck

 

[Someone Somewhere]

If it's a recent mac, it should be able to boot from a USB disk.

Does the laptop have a CD drive? Writing CDs tends to be a bit harder to mess up.

 

[Honeybadger191]

If it's a recent mac, it should be able to boot from a USB disk.

Does the laptop have a CD drive? Writing CDs tends to be a bit harder to mess up.

the laptop is not a mac, I'm writing this on a mac tho, i guess ill just use a friends usb disk thanks anyway

 

[Someone Somewhere]

No, I mean that you should be able to test that the disk was written correctly using the mac.

 

[Honeybadger191]

No, I mean that you should be able to test that the disk was written correctly using the mac.

oh, um ya it boots fine, but it says there is nothing on it on the laptop