linux Hacking

My Experience Installing Kali Linux on USB (Failed)

Shou Arisaka
2 min read
Nov 24, 2025

Do you know about Kali Linux? It’s an OS often used for hacking. I’ve known about it for a while, but actually needed to use it, so I attempted installation for the first time.

Installing it on USB and booting from there seems to be the mainstream method, so I tried to do it that way… but to tell you the result, I couldn’t. I managed to get to the installation, but when I tried to boot from it, the PC was unresponsive and it didn’t work.

Downloading the ISO

You can download the ISO file from: https://www.kali.org/downloads/

UNetbootin

The first method I tried was using UNetbootin. This is a famous tool that makes it easy to install most major Linux distributions including Ubuntu onto USB. When people talk about installing Ubuntu on USB, this tool’s name will definitely come up.

I specified the ISO file with this, installed it to USB… then plugged it into my PC, ran sudo reboot, and thought it worked… but it was skipped.

■ By the way, my BIOS settings for prioritizing USB boot should be set correctly. Before failing, I tried plugging in a Ubuntu installation media USB and rebooting, and it worked fine.

Win32 Disk Imager

Since the UNetbootin method didn’t work, I tried a different tool. I used Win32 Disk Imager.

https://sourceforge.net/projects/win32diskimager/?source=typ_redirect

I also tried this method, following this site: https://docs.kali.org/downloading/kali-linux-live-usb-install

But it failed too. The USB was completed, but couldn’t boot.

virtualbox

While I couldn’t boot from USB, I succeeded with virtualbox. I wanted to do it on Ubuntu, but I got stuck at the virtualbox installation stage and couldn’t do it, so I did it on Windows and it worked.

However, with virtualbox, it seems to be limited to guest mode only. I tried installing it myself, but it froze on a black screen after installation, so I had to force shutdown.

So it’s only guest mode boot each time, which reduces convenience, but it’s better than not being able to use it at all.

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Shou Arisaka Nov 24, 2025

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