[Matt Devo]

Thanks for the feedback Matt. Also, thanks for the script! Super easy to install. I did go ahead and add an 8gig stick. I have a large library and it was acting like it was slowing down with the more thumbs that were loading. It seems to be running much smoother now with the extended RAM. Movie thumbs are loading super fast and i can quickly scroll from the top of my library to the bottom with zero lag. If i see any more lag ill report it back.

how large a library are we talking about? I've yet to see a slowdown on mine, but I am using a central mySQL database on my NAS.

Try another USB drive.
I had exactly the same experience as you. Initial 'ESC to boot from USB' but in my case I was late hitting ESC. And after that I was only getting 'Boot from Hard Disk' message. My keyboard was fine but the culprit was the USB thumb drive.. and it was a brand new recently bought 4gb drive. I had an 4yrs old 16gb OCZ USB drive so I downloaded the disk image from openelec's site onto it and lo and behold it finally showed the "ESC to boot from USB". So I suggest trying any other USB drive.

I had to try 3 different USB drives for this. I had a PNY thumb drive that i was able to load the restore onto, but then failed to be recognized at the restore step. I tried a SD drive that was not recognized at all. Then i pulled the memory card out of my camera and it worked perfectly. It was very picky.

If you have a USB stick that's not working and want to help me troubleshoot/fix the issue, send me a PM, as I thought I'd fixed most of them. I'd expect at this point the problem is going to be devices that don't init within the USB-spec specified time, given how quickly the system boots.