BIOS not seeing USBHDD anymore.

Hello. I'm not sure if I'm asking in the right place. If I'm not, I apologize.

Here's the issue. I have an eMachines eM350 netbook that used to be able to boot from a flash drive, until now. I have a flash drive that is dedicated to installing an OS via USB, and recently I've been looking to reinstall Xubuntu as a dual boot, but for whatever reason, my BIOS won't even recognize the drive anymore as USBHDD, and any other drive I use is categorized as USBFDD, even using the same model (Lexar 16GB S70)

Windows is still capable of recognizing the flash drive (Lexar 8GB S70), but not the BIOS.

What do I have to do so that I can boot from a flash drive again?

Thanks.

Try creating your Linux Live USB pendrive with LiLi - Linux Live USB Creator. http://www.linuxliveusb.com/

If it does not work with your Lexar pendrive, try another brand pen drive.

If you go ahead and check what type of filesystem your drive is formatted for that'll help. If it's formatted for NTFS, almost no BIOS will recognize it. You've gotta format it to FAT for it to be detected. Hope that helps.

Wow that's ultra-helpful bro.

A bit rough to argue when you use the words "completely" and "totally" when that invalidates your argument off the bat seeing as how there ARE motherboards out there that can't use/see NTFS drives, and you jump onto a thread to do nothing more than troll because you don't have a tip to put out there yourself.

I mighta been confused with "some BIOS flashing systems won't see NTFS drives" because that's literally what I ran into yesterday on a UEFI BIOS. But still, there are plenty more tactful ways of correcting a guy.

I am not a Linux expert but I understand from many forums that Ubuntu will not boot from an NTFS formatted pendrive. OP has to write the Ubuntu ISO image to a FAT32 formatted pendrive, if he has used any such program where it is a two-step process first formatting the drive and then writing the image.

When he prepares the bootable pen drive using programs that automatically format the pendrive then he is safe.:) These programs will automatically format the pendrive appropriately before writing the bootable Ubuntu on it. Exactly why I recommended LiLi.

The question at hand here is still why his BIOS isn't recognizing his thumbdrive, not what kind of partition is or isn't relevant under different scenarios.

I still think the filesystem could play a factor, especially if it's being seen in Windows and not somewhere else. That's usually a pretty normal sign.