After writing the Kali ISO to a USB, it is a good practice to verify that :

1. Files were copied correctly to the USB

2. The USB is bootable.

3. Making sure that the ISO wasn’t corrupted.

kali@kali:~$ lsblk

You should see partitions like boot/efi,live after running the above command.

You can use disk manager to view the partitions created on the USB. Note that windows will not recognize the file system used in the USB and will mark it as corrupted and will prompt you to format it. Do not format it.

kali@kali:~$ shasum -a 256 kali-linux-2025.1-live-amd64.iso 

Replace the iso file name with the one you downloaded.Verify the checksum with the one provided on the page from which you downloaded the iso.

If certutil is available you can run :

certutil -hashfile kali-linux-2025.1-live-amd64.iso sha256

To verify your download.Certain versions of Windows do not have the native ability to calculate SHA256 checksums. If you do not have certutil installed, you can use a utility such as Microsoft File Checksum Integrity Verifier or Hashtab to verify your download.

Finally try booting from the USB.

1. Ensure that you used Balena Etcher to flash the iso.
2. Disable secure boot in BIOS if it is enabled.

This means that your iso file was corrupted during download. Re-download the kali iso and then write it again on the USB.