USB Boot Issues with Acer Aspire One 532h

[Aaron11]

I just recently bought an Acer Aspire One 532h off of eBay. It was advertised as used, except the seller said that he had lots of crap on the netbook and eventually it stopped booting into Windows and started displaying NTLDR is missing. He didn't seem like he knew a whole lot about computers so I went ahead and bought it thinking it would be an easy fix and all I would have to do is reinstall Windows. Well what a pain that has been. I have tried two different USB sticks (I don't have an external DVD drive) and I keep having problems. The first is my 4GB one with windows files on it. What happens is it starts loading files (just lkike a regular install disc would) then halfway through or so (sometimes it will go farther, but usually halfway through) there's no activity lights on the thumb drive and the installer tells me that it can't continue because its been disconnected, Then, on my 1GB drive, I have put ubuntu on it and while its loading the kernel off the drive, it gives me a similar message in linux. I'm kind of already thinking its the motherboard. Any suggestions?