Bonnie - you can't just drag-and-drop the download image. The download image is one of those .iso files and is an image of a complete disk (ie everything on the disk as it was written physically on the disk). If you drag and drop it you'll get a windows file system with the iso file as a file on the disk. I don't think windows recognises iso images directly to copy them as a disk image (I may be wrong on that - haven't used w8). Normally you need a special copy program to copy the image to a cd for example.

To create a bootable usb is a bit more complicated, but there's a utility that lets you do it from windows. See this page: Create a USB stick on Windows. The steps are essentially:

1) Download and install (in Windows) the program shown at the top of that page and run it.

2) Select Ubuntu 12.04 desktop (or whichever system you want from the dropdown list).

3) Click the Browse button and select the iso file that you downloaded from the Ubuntu site (it should be the corresponding version to that you selected at 2); it should have a name something like ubuntu-12.04-desktop-...iso (... is the machine type probably something like i686 or amd64).

4) Select your usb drive in the drop down and click create and that should create the bootable usb


I have used this program to create a bootable ubuntu usb myself (though I've rarely used it - I thought it might be handy to have it for emergencies).

Assuming you can set the system to boot from the usb, you can then boot directly from there.

Mick