SanDisk Cruzer Boot Impossible?

[Hopkins]

I recently bought one of these tiny SanDisk Cruzer things.

I cannot for the life of me get it to boot anything. I am using this Memtest utility to test, and I can boot my laptop (a Lenovo T530) from another USB key (so I know my laptop is not at fault). The SanDisk came pre-installed with some awful software (which might have been U3, I am not sure) and I have performed various formats, most recently one using the HDDGuru low level format tool.

Any suggestions? Thanks in advance!

[HaQue]

Yes - Get another drive, such as a Lexar or Toshiba. They are so cheap it isn't worth stuffing around with ones that do like you describe.

I don't know what they smoke at the Sandisk R & D dept, but I want some.

Some USB Drives just suck at being used for booting.

I think this is enough proof:

Google search: ... why sandisk usb boot wont
About 310,000 results
"I've gotten my 4 GB Sandisk flash drive to boot. But, my 8 GB drive won't."
"Cannot boot from LiveUSB created with Pendrivelinux "
"Why doesnt my computer detect my 32g sandisk usb stick "
etc etc etc.

cheers!
HaQue

[Hopkins]

Thanks for the reply. I will certainly take your recommendation of brands next time because, even though I have disabled autoplay, right clicking the drive in order to get at the format command caused explorer to lock up... God knows what it was doing... In the end I stuck it in my Synology NAS and formatted it from there. Horrible!

However, I fear I may have wasted your time with this post. I had concluded that the computer was not at fault because it appeared to try to boot from another USB stick - actually, it failed, but with another error message which I dismissed because I had not used that drive in some time - but it appeared at least to have tried. However, it turns out that if I applied the same method to that drive then it failed in the same way. Not only that, but both drives succeeded when I finally managed to get hold of another computer. So, I was a little hasty. A bit more digging and experimentation has shown that actually it is a UEFI issue - I had to enable the legacy BIOS mode. Doh. I used to keep "up to date" with "computers and stuff", but it appears that I am lagging behind these days!

[HaQue]

a, well no problems, at least your experience is here now for anyone googling similiar things to find. all these small nuggets are valuable to someone.
good luck