Usb Ubuntu

Dear Geeks,

Thanks for taking the time to read my post.

I'm in no way tech minded, but generally speaking I can follow a tutorial. Here's the story so far:

I installed Ubuntu to a pen drive using Rufus and all went prefectly fine. I booted into Ubuntu from the USB several times to check that the OS was good for me. Everything worked perfectly and I was very happy to see my music software and hardware worked flawlessly.

So before I actually installed the OS onto the HDD I decided to DBAN it first (just a single zero overwrite).
I followed a tutorial to create a bootable DBAN on my pen drive, in fact I did it in precisely the same way that I created the bootable Ubuntu. Here's the problem: now when I reboot my laptop and enter boot select, the pen drive simply doesn't show up.

In my utter annoyance I decided to put Ubuntu back on the USB and try to do the disk wipe using Ubuntu's terminal. So I create the Ubuntu USB bootable exactly as before and all seems to go fine, however now the Ubuntu USB is also not showing up when selecting boot devices.

P.S. To make matters worse it's my wife's laptop and it's all in Russian and she has no idea about computers. I'm about ready to throw the bloody thing out of the window!

So, the big question here is: How come the laptop had no problems recognising the bootable USB the first 5 or 6 times I booted from it, and now simply doesn't include it on the list of bootables??

I've tried all the obvious stuff like using different USB port, reformatting USB and recreating the bootable Ubuntu image. I even went into BIOS (or whatever the UEFI equivalent is) and disabled secure boot as I had read that this can play havoc. If nothing else this post is a cathartic whinge coz it's driving me crazy!

If anyone could shed some light that a simple minded tech virgin might understand I'd be super appreciative.

Thanks for listening /rant

 

This is just a guesstimate...
Reset the BIOS to the defaults.

If the USB stick still doesn't show, try a different one.

 

On some pc's fast boot needs to be disabled in the bios to boot usb's. Look down to step 4 in this article. In fact the whole article might be worth a read if playing around with Ub.

https://www.tweaking4all.com/os-tips-and-tricks/uefi-dual-boot-windows81-ubuntu/

You can also look up "dell fast boot", "asus fast boot", "intel fast boot", ect...........

 

Thanks for all inputs guys. I finally managed to sort it out! Is there a way to mark a thread as closed?

Thanks

 

It could be helpful to members if you would post how you solved the issue.