AAO fails to boot from USB stick

For performing a backup, I prepared a 4GB USB stick with system rescue CD (http://www.sysresccd.org) on it. I parted the USB stick into 2 partions with 500M and 3,5, respectively. Then I installed all the system rescue CD stuff in the smaller first partition. I tested the stick on my desktop PC and everything works fine. I can see the bootable USB stick in the BIOS boot menu, can choose it and the computer boots from the USB stick. On the AAO I can also see the USB stick in the BIOS boot menu, but when I choose it, the screen becomes black and I see nothing but a blinking cursor in the upper left corner. After that, nothing happens.

On the other hand, when plugging the stick in the AAO with the OS running, both partitions of the stick are correctly recognised.

Any ideas what can be wrong? Why doesn't the AAO boot from the stick, but my desktop PC does?

 

I have the same problem on my A110.
I first discovered the problem several weeks ago when I was attempting to install Windows XP.
I succeeded after trying several times, over and over again. And as a last attempt I tried different USB-ports. Suddenly when using one of the ports on the right side of the machine, it worked, and I managed to install XP. But now I tried again, actually to install OS X on it, and I have stumbled onto the problem again.

In the different guides I've seen we are not the only ones with the problem, but the other users say there must be something wrong with the software we have on the usb-stick. In my case I know it is correct, becouse of the MD5 checksum is correct vs one that works on another AAO.

By this I guess it is an error on some of the machines.
My AAO is an AOA110, BIOS v0.3304, VGA Bios: V1505 and P-SSD-1800 flash disk

Edit: I just wants to add that I have tried different USB-sticks, even two different usb harddisks, and both my original xp usb stick who worked once before, and different linux live usb stick versions etc. It simply refuses to boot, just the black screen with the blinking cursor.

 

I now tried with another USB stick with the same System Rescue CD software on it with only one 1GB partition. This stick also works fine with my desktop PC.

My AAO again fails to boot from the stick. But now I don't get the blinking cursor on a black screen but a message "Missing operating system".

My hardware is: A110L, BIOS v.03109, VGA Bios Intel V1585. I also have the P-SSD-1800 flash disk.

Any suggestions what to try next?

 

[solved] Re: AAO fails to boot from USB stick

I got both USB sticks working. It sems as if the AAO is very sensitive concerning not 100% correct filesystems and MBRs when booting from a USB stick. I used testdrive which is included in the SystemRescueCD to completely delete the partition table and build up a new one. Afterwards I installed a new MBR, too. When inserting the USB sticks into the AAO I was able to boot from both of them.