I wanted to install a Linux distro on an old Laptop. After creating a bootable USB drive using Rufus, I inserted the USB stick and booted the Laptop.
Initially the Laptop detected the USB stick and gave me the Linux install options.
I made my choice and the installation started but then the Laptop booted to the normal OS.
I thought it was strange so shut down the Laptop and tried again.
This time the USB stick was not detected by the Laptop at all but could be detected by my Desktop computer. The USB stick was formatted as UEFI by Rufus and the Laptop BIOS was set to UEFI. Just to see if it would make any difference, I tried changing the Laptop BIOS to IDE but that didn’t help as the USB stick was UEFI.
The USB stick was a Kingston 32GB stick.
I then thought to repeat the whole process by trying a Sandisk 16GB USB stick and this time the USB stick was detected and the installation completed as normal.