[syslinux] USB stick won't boot anymore

[lanas]

Hi all,

  This surely has nothing to do with syslinux, but since many people
here ar eusing USB sticks as booting devices (using syslinux) this is a
good place to ask, I think.

  I have an Apacer 1GB USB stick that was happily booting PCs using
syslinux.  But now, after some tests, it does not anymore.  It does not
even produce some kind of message from syslinux when booting.  Nothing. 
The computer simply hangs there after doing its initial chores.  And the
BIOS settings are OK.  At one point during tests I did a 'dd
if=/dev/zero of=/mnt/sda bs=512 count=1000', maybe that thrashed the USB
stick ?  Anyhow, I tried everything, I think, to make it alive again,
including copying the mbr.bin file on it ('cat mbr.bin > /dev/sda'). 
The procedure to make it boot otherwise stayed the same:

  - make one partition using fdisk
  - make it type 6 
  - make it active
  - use mkdosfs -I to format it
  - copy the initrd.gz file
  - copy a kernel
  - copy an extremly basic syslinux.cfg file
  - unmount it
  - run syslinux against it

  But still, it does no boot any machine.  Has someone ever found the
same situation withan USB stick and what to do ?

  Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

Al