Hi guys,

I am not a newbie by any stretch but I am no expert either. I have had a Mini-ITX box running Ubuntu Server as a headless server for the last few years. It runs my Squeezebox software, acts as a NAS and serves up my movies via Plex. All was working just fine.

The PC had a 160GB HDD for the OS and a 500GB for /home - where all my media was stored.

Then I upgraded my hardware with a new MOBO and case etc. This included a new 2TB HDD for /home but I took the old 160GB out of the old PC and used it for the OS drive in the new box (repartitioning etc).

The new box is purring along nicely.

I decided I would try out XMBC on the old box, since it still had the 500GB HDD in there. I downloaded the XMBC image and built a bootable USB stick using Universal-USB-Installer-1.9.0.5. I tested this on my Windows 7 laptop and could boot into it and run XMBC in 'live' mode.

When I try to boot into the USB stick on the old Mini-ITX PC I get as far as the 'Boot from CD: ' prompt and nothing happens. I have gone into the BIOS and made sure it is configured to boot from USB first but no luck.

I also tried booting from a Windows XP install DVD I had lying around, but again nothing happens post the 'Boot from CD ' prompt. Again, I ensure the BIOS was configured to boot from the CDROM drive before any HDD.

Even if I don't have any bootable media attached if I try to boot it doesn't even prompt me to say the HDD is not bootable or no OS is found. Remember the HDD is the /home partition from the old headless server, so has no OS etc.

I am a bit stumped as to how I can get this PC to boot - into anything! I want to re-partition the HDD and install XMBC as a trial, and potentially reinstall Ubuntu Server and build a simple NAS for my brother.

Any ideas on what I am doing wrong? I hope I have given enough details so you can offer some suggestions?!

Cheers,
Ben