USB booting :: Linux can't find USB pen drive

Hi, I have been trying to install linux to my broken (can't play sound) MP3 player for a few hours, but when I plug it in,I can't mount it. it doesn't turn up as sda1 or anything in /mnt and I can't find anything that might help me. In /mnt, I have the folders auto, cdrom, floppy, hd, hda1 (my C: drive in windows), hdb1 (my F: drive in windows), pts, sys and test. What I've been doing is booting with it unplugged, letting linux load, plugging it in and checking to see if it's turned up. But I don't think that's the problem. I think it may be because of the usb port. in windows, it shows up as COM 5 and as far as I know, linux doesn't check higher than COM 4. I'm going out in a bit to get a 512MB pen drive, but I don't think that'll help.

edit: never mind, it had 6 files on it, I deleted them and it works now.

edit: or not...now it gives the error "/dev/sda1 is not a valid block device"...looks like I'm getting that pen drive.

edit: I got the new pen drive, set it all up and apparently, my laptop's motherboard's BIOS doesn't like USB booting.

original here.