What It Takes

To boot from a USB flash drive, that is. This old motherboard (ASUS P5P43TD) is bizarrely fussy about booting from USB keys.

You must put the USB key in this particular port

Or the one directly under it. But none of the other 4 on the back.

I believe “Quick Boot” must be disabled

Not absolutely sure on this one.

And then you can set “Removable Dev.” in the boot device priority.

If you use the wrong port, you get some name relating to the particular USB key instead of “Removable Dev.” Then, putting that device first doesn’t boot from it.  (However, to confuse you, if you select the boot menu instead of setup, and choose to boot from that device name, it works.)

I haven’t encountered anything quite this idiotic with more recent motherboards, at least.

Possibly now I’ll be able to find this information if I need it again.