Supposedly bootable USB of memtest86 not working...

Hardware and technical stuff
1

Hello all,

I downloaded the Windows download of “Image for creating a bootable USB drive” from the memtest86.com website at this URL: http://www.memtest86.com/download.htm (the free 7.2 version). Everything seemed to write to the flash drive fine (a Kingston 32GB one), but when I try to boot from the USB drive connected to my new Asus Z170-A motherboard, it just won’t boot–I don’t get anything at all on screen, as if no video signal was being sent from the motherboard at all (it’s an old analog CRT connected to the VGA port which works otherwise, when booting off the SSD with Windows 10 installed, for instance). Same thing happens when I explicitly set the boot order to use the USB drive (strangely, in the UEFI BIOS, it appears that the flash drive has multiple iterations–not sure what’s going on there).

Anyone have a clue as to what could be going on?

2

sometimes the drive is too big and won’t work (16gb partition or smaller) depending on the file system.

try these 2 free programs to repartition/reformat/reapply the iso contents:

https://rufus.akeo.ie/
or

if you have an older + smaller drive try that (8 or less)

3

Also make sure it’s the right filesystem. Some motherboards will only boot FAT32 or NTFS USB sticks, not both.

4

Thanks for the replies. I think that the size/capacity question wouldn’t be a factor with a modern motherboard, would it, @rei ? Thanks for links-- I already knew about Rufus and tried to use it to create a bootable USB of the latest memtest86+ ISO from memtest.org but it didn’t like the USB drive for some reason.

How would one check the file system of a flash drive? You may be onto something there, @Ginger_Yellow – the drive was originally a FAT32 one, and I assumed that the bootable USB creation program would have reformatted the drive wth NTFS but maybe it didn’t.

5

Right click on it in Explorer and check the properties.

6

it can still be an issue with a modern mobo because some kernels only boot with <8/16gb which limits what file system too.

7

Ah, good to know. In the case of this Z170-A, though, I did successfully use Rufus to create a bootable USB of Windows 10’s installer with the same model/size of USB drive (namely a 32GB Kingston Traveler), and that one worked as a boot device.
Gonna see if reformatting this drive as an NTFS one will let me use Rufus with it as I originally intended (thinking back, I failed to take that step with this one beforehand).