Or from another POV, your Acer's bios is wrong and won't boot a standard USB-HDD, no?
Well, it boots when stick is created in Windows with core2usb, unetbootin or other tools. Also works if installed with tc-install using native linux file system.
Anyhow, why I'm curious do not have time to investigate what is behind as I can install USB on Windows.
I see many forum notes referring to similar Acer related issues. Also tried SLAX to install on LINUX and got same fauilure while SLAX WINOWS installation is also OK.