i have not even started using unraid yet, i have a proliant N40L server and a lexar fire fly usb stick, i know this to work because i had started the process of setting up but halted to do the bios hack for my server that allows full speeds to the ODD SATA port, since then when i have tried to start installing unraid i just get a black screen and flashing cursor in the top left, i have tried the makebootable bat file after extracting to usb and that makes no difference, the system itself boots up fine, posts and i can access the bios no problem, i have had a read of the wiki, my mobo is all set to boot from usb key, i know this as i have already seen it in action, not sure what i am missing now..only thing i have done different from last time is to create unmenu folder and extract the unmenu install to it and also to extract preclear to the root of the usb.

that hardware is completely compatible with unraid.  (assuming you didnt change the ram)

in fact, i just got the same stuff this week to play with.

 

It sounds like you made a mistake in the creation of your boot flash drive.

 

since you have never booted to unraid yet, I would go ahead and format the flash drive (fat32) in your desktop and start over with the creation.

 

i formatted it in another pc..still not booting...i dont understand, i had it booting once but decided to halt the process. I have downloaded 4.7 and i have 6 drives installed, one is off the esata port and one is on the ODD port

Try booting from another pc; you can the rule out the flash drive as being the problem.

does the same on my main pc, but in the boot priority the bios sees 'lexar firefly' as the boot device, i can write to and from it, i had a problem formatting it with windows at one stage so i used easus partition manager to delete it and reformat it, it now formats in windows fine, i cant see that this is the problem..i am grabbing a tool to to try to format this particular device now.

something must have gone awry with the key, i downloaded HP usb formatting tool and it seems to have sorted the problem out, i think when i used easus to format it i must have deleted some hidden partitions from it, the HP tool made a point of stating 'creating partition' whereas windows format just doen a quick format.