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CRAP! I am so dumb. Tried to boot the USB on my 64 bit Intel NUC aand it didn't work. Tried in legacy mode. Wasn't even recognized. WTF ? Went back to my desktop and looked at the USB. I had it formatted, for earlier use, as FAT 32. That may a good reason for not working. Will format as ext4 and try again.

ticojohn wrote:CRAP! I am so dumb. Tried to boot the USB on my 64 bit Intel NUC aand it didn't work. Tried in legacy mode. Wasn't even recognized. WTF ? Went back to my desktop and looked at the USB. I had it formatted, for earlier use, as FAT 32. That may a good reason for not working. Will format as ext4 and try again.

You do not need to format the stick, everything on it will be overwritten by ISO image, including the partition table and the filesystem.

I have a Pentium 4 which runs 64bit Debian. However, due to a motherboard limitation, I can only have a maximum of 2GB RAM.

With older CPUs, the motherboard chipset controlled the RAM limits. On modern Intel i3, i5 & i7 CPUs, the CPU controls the limit. PAE was introduced on the Pentium Pro in 1995. If you're unable to access more than 3.2GB of RAM, then your motherboard could need replacing but not necessarily the CPU. It is possible, with a Core 2 Duo, that the motherboard has a 32bit chipset which means PAE is a moot point. I had a Dell Precision M90 laptop which was designed like that.

ticojohn wrote:CRAP! I am so dumb.

I'm glad you found the source of the problem.

Okay. Started over. Used Gparted to format the USB stick as ext4 (it originally was used for other things and was FAT32 - dumb). Copied the iso again using dd. Still doesn't work. I notice that even though the BIOS recognizes the USB as a bootable device, when I look at the USB with Gparted the device is not marked as bootable and the system type is unrecognized. Looks like this may be operator error. I tried to boot the USB on my Intel NUC and it doesn't even recognize the USB. I would burn a CD but don't have any blanks available. Here is the dd command I used: Any helpful suggestions ?

ticojohn wrote:Any helpful suggestions ?

Please read the previous posts. We've already tried.

After formatting the USB stick, are you copying the ISO to the first partition?

EDIT: Oh, I just noticed that's exactly what you're doing. That is where you're going wrong.

phenest wrote:

ticojohn wrote:Any helpful suggestions ?

Please read the previous posts. We've already tried.

After formatting the USB stick, are you copying the ISO to the first partition?

EDIT: Oh, I just noticed that's exactly what you're doing. That is where you're going wrong.

Yes, only one partition. Guess I better read some more. Don't know exactly what I need to do as far as partitioning.

Use dd to copy to sdg and not sdg1. You don't need to format the USB drive.

Segfault wrote:

ticojohn wrote:CRAP! I am so dumb. Tried to boot the USB on my 64 bit Intel NUC aand it didn't work. Tried in legacy mode. Wasn't even recognized. WTF ? Went back to my desktop and looked at the USB. I had it formatted, for earlier use, as FAT 32. That may a good reason for not working. Will format as ext4 and try again.

You do not need to format the stick, everything on it will be overwritten by ISO image, including the partition table and the filesystem.

ticojohn wrote:

phenest wrote:

ticojohn wrote:Any helpful suggestions ?

Please read the previous posts. We've already tried.

After formatting the USB stick, are you copying the ISO to the first partition?

EDIT: Oh, I just noticed that's exactly what you're doing. That is where you're going wrong.

Yes, only one partition. Guess I better read some more. Don't know exactly what I need to do as far as partitioning.

I think I'll give up on this one. Asking for help and not reading the advice given ...

Segfault wrote: I think I'll give up on this one. Asking for help and not reading the advice given ...

Oh, don't give up! LOL! I got it working. "Just Read The Instructions" . Actually, I went to the Debian docs (DOH !) and instead of using dd I did it per the instructions and used cp and then sync. Works GREAT, albeit a bit slow.

So, if I really want to take advantage of what the 64 bit OS can do I suppose I could look for a LGA775 motherboard that supports more than 4 GB of ram. And no more worries about i386 (686 pae) versus amd64.

And thanks for not giving up.
UPDATE:
And by the way, I misread the post where it said to dd to /dev/sdg and not /dev/sdg1 , that is why I appeared to be not following you advice. Mark it up to bad eyes, or just stupidity if you will. Maybe font size. But it was clear in the Debian docs (bigger fonts, lol).

So, I was looking at some other sites and it looks like I could MAYBE upgrade my 686 system to amd64 by doing this: Will this work and if so what might any repercussions be? I suppose that I would need to install multi-arch for the 32 bit programs I have, such as Skype. Is there anything negative about this approach?

Ok, so try to write the iso to the stick like it should be done, that is follow the instructions this time. If it still does not boot, but it does boot on other devices, then there are other things you can try.

pylkko wrote:Ok, so try to write the iso to the stick like it should be done, that is follow the instructions this time. If it still does not boot, but it does boot on other devices, then there are other things you can try.

Did that and it worked. Thanks.