"I had a lot of trouble getting openelec to run off of a livestick, so I purchased a SSD and installed to it..... it installed just fine, but just like some of the other USB live sticks, it will not boot. The only way I can get it to boot is to go into the bios, select it and then hit save and exit... only then it will boot."
I too had trouble with the Window's PE environment (Hiren USB CD) and Windows 8 installer (non EFI) on a USB stick to boot. It would blue screen when I tried. I had to turn off "Precision Timing" option in the BIOS to get it to stop blue screening. I think this may be something that is effecting your live stick too.