Hi Steve, thanks for your response. Ill test the usb drive as soon as i get home.

When i run the Make_E2B_USB_Drive.cmd i do pick FAT32 (the iso i want to install is 700mb) but it fails on grubinst with the error mentioned above.

I have the same suspicion as you - the usb drive might be somehow corrupted.

My system is WinXp SP3 32 bits and I dont have my usb pen here to lsusb it and give you the details but i do have one exactly the same model (with some company data):

"UDisk :

Product ID: 0x1234
Vendor ID: 0xabcd
Version: 1.00
Serial Number: 1405251407421358464002
Speed: Up to 480 Mb/sec
Manufacturer: General
Location ID: 0xfd130000 / 5
Current Available (mA): 500
Current Required (mA): 100
Capacity: 2.01 GB (2,013,265,920 bytes)
Removable Media: Yes
Detachable Drive: Yes
BSD Name: disk1
Partition Map Type: MBR (Master Boot Record)
S.M.A.R.T. status: Not Supported
Volumes:
NO NAME:
Capacity: 2.01 GB (2,013,249,536 bytes)
Available: 1.88 GB (1,880,064,000 bytes)
Writable: Yes
File System: MS-DOS FAT16
BSD Name: disk1s1
Mount Point: /Volumes/NO NAME
Content: DOS_FAT_16"