I can connect HDMI and can get into UBUNTU, but I cannot get into BIOS to tell it to boot from USB. If I could get that figured out- I think HDMI will activate on the boot of the ISO, but Im not sure. I even tried VGA to a monitor, but that dont show me bios either. Dont wake up till Ubuntu starts to boot.

Can you physically disconnect the hard drive? Maybe you'll get lucky and USB will be next in the boot order. Contrary to popular belief, you can USUALLY plug the hard drive back in while the system is running from USB without any problems.

oh. You may be onto something. I am pretty sure USB is boot option 2, but if not it would be my disc drive- but I can make that work too. It's a Lenova (maybe acer) laptop with some wierd tool it seems to open it up. I can try to figure it out though. I just want to use it as an inhome server so it dont need to look pretty.

Keep in mind, you might get a kernel panic when you try to hot-plug the drive back in. It's not guaranteed to work, but it's worth a try.

If that doesn't work (kernel panic or whatever) you can disconnect the drive and connect it via a SATA-to-USB adapter in which case hot plugging should definitely work.