Booting from CD drive

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species8350

If I want to boot from the CD drive on ocassions, but otherwise boot
from the hard disk. How can I achieve this.

Thanks
 
Is your BIOS set to boot from CD first? If not, set it for CD first and
hard drive second. When you boot the computer with bootable CD/DVD media
inserted in the drive it will give you the result you're looking for.
 
If I want to boot from the CD drive on ocassions, but otherwise boot
from the hard disk. How can I achieve this.
Click to expand...


Set your BIOS to boot from the CD first and the hard drive second. If
when you boot there's a CD in the drive, it will either boot from it
or prompt you to tell it to boot from it. If there's no CD in the
drive, it will boot from the hard drive.
 
Set your BIOS to boot from the CD first and the hard drive second. If
when you boot there's a CD in the drive, it will either boot from it
or prompt you to tell it to boot from it. If there's no CD in the
drive, it will boot from the hard drive.
Click to expand...

Thank you
 
You're welcome. Glad to help.

--
Ken Blake, Microsoft MVP (Windows Desktop Experience) since 2003
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- Show quoted text -
Click to expand...

Looking at my boot order it looks like I boot in order: floppy, hard
drive, cdrom, usb device.

When I last rebooted, I looked at the lights on the tower. The CD lit
first, then A drive, then I believe the HD.

Can anyone explain this?

Thabnks
 
What do you mean by "A drive"?
Did you tower come with an A/B drive, i.e. floppy???
That is surprising because such media/drives have been phased out years ago
and no modern computer comes with those.
So A or B drive is now never used, those drive letters remain to be reserved
for floppies though and if you ever insist on using a floppy, it's possible
even today in 2010.

Anyways, if it lights up and you wish to save a FEW MICROSECONDS during
bootup and not accidentally boot up form a floppy disk in case you have that
antiquity somehow, just DELETE ALL FLOPPY/A/B DRIVE(S) from Booting sequence
in your BIOS.

Remove floppies form booting sequence in BIOS.
This will save you only a tiny amount of time, but it doesn't hurt.
I used todo that all the time.

But now my modern laptops BIOS's don't even mention floppies, unless I
forgot... if it's there I am sure to have disabled setting which tells BIOS
to check if there's a bootable floppy inserted into A or B drive.

You shouldn't worry much about these things, and worry more about real life,
not what your computer blinks.

P.S. Don't do this but being in electronics for almost 25 years I did:
I modified my HP laptop cuz it's annoying bright blue lights were
distracting at night.
I opened case and installed a switch which shuts off all LED's that face me
and annoying glow in darkness, also good for battery life.
I only left one LED for optical drive so I wouldn't disturb it when it's
reading/writing - which is indicated by its own LED, which I incidentally
can't access anyway.

My laptop is dark at night if I activate this home-made switch.
But this is just an innuendo about annoying lights.
Remember how it was 20 years ago, when every extra light added that aura of
"high-tech", "star wars" type of impression?
And Blue LED until recent years was impossible, due to semiconductors
limitation.

Now it's the opposite extreme.
What used to be rare, is now pushed down our throats in excessive quantity.
My HP laptop came with ALL lights implemented as Blue LED's!!  What's up
with that?  To tell us "we're so trendy, and we mastered MIT invention"to
a point where I have 9 bright LED's constantly glowing in my face while I
like to work at night.
I had to tame down all of it.

Just a typical social phenomenon of Capitalism.  If something is rare,
there's demand for it and profits to be made, there're people working hard
to achieve this, but once product appears on store shelves, it goes on and
one into OVERSUPPLY.  Until crisis strikes.  Same with Blue LED's.  Once it
was impossible (only Red, Green, Yellow and Infrared existed), then it was
possible but expensive, now it's excessive.
Everybody does Blue LED.

Ohh yeah I wouldn't want to stare into RED LED's all night, that would be
the worst cuz red is an Alarming color to Humans and many animals.
But a little green wouldn't hurt.
Most importantly - a little NOTHING would be best!
A kind of s witch to disable all these lights.

Being an electronics specialist I did it with own hands and parts from
Digikey/Newark and Radioshack.
But it should've been thought of by Hewlett-Packard.
I do have a much smaller and less annoying lights on Asus laptop  maybeHP
could learn from it!
Click to expand...

Yes I do have a floppy drive ('A')

Ping Ken Blake
 
Yes I do have a floppy drive ('A')

Ping Ken Blake
Click to expand...

species8350,
Do yourself a huge favor and PLONK Stan. He's a well known troll and moron
and replying to him only causes the rest of us who have him sh!t-canned to
see his posts.
 
What do you mean by "A drive"?
Did you tower come with an A/B drive, i.e. floppy???
That is surprising because such media/drives have been phased out years
ago and no modern computer comes with those.
So A or B drive is now never used, those drive letters remain to be
reserved for floppies though and if you ever insist on using a floppy,
it's possible even today in 2010.
Click to expand...
Stan
My HP Pavilion is only a couple years old, purchased from Costco, and
has a floppy drive. I think I paid $20 extra when I ordered the computer.

I very seldom use the A: drive, but last week I transferred a 1987 DOS
program from a floppy. The surprising result was that the program ran
just fine in an XP command window -- no mouse support, though.

Bill
 
Stan
My HP Pavilion is only a couple years old, purchased from Costco, and
has a floppy drive. I think I paid $20 extra when I ordered the computer.

I very seldom use the A: drive, but last week I transferred a 1987 DOS
program from a floppy. The surprising result was that the program ran
just fine in an XP command window -- no mouse support, though.
Click to expand...


You can buy a floppy drive for as little as $10 US or so, and install
it yourself. Installing it is very easy.

I have one here, which I use so seldom that I can't even remember the
last time. Nevertheless there is always the possibility that I have an
old file stored on a floppy that I need to see again. For $10, I'm
more comfortable having one just in case.
 
You can buy a floppy drive for as little as $10 US or so, and install
it yourself. Installing it is very easy.

I have one here, which I use so seldom that I can't even remember the
last time. Nevertheless there is always the possibility that I have an
old file stored on a floppy that I need to see again. For $10, I'm
more comfortable having one just in case.

--
Ken Blake, Microsoft MVP (Windows Desktop Experience) since 2003
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- Show quoted text -
Click to expand...

Ken,

I pressed F12 when booting and found a menu.

But I could not leave this menu.

I ended up in Setup which I could leave, but I ended up back at the
Boot Menu.

When entering the Boot Menu, how can I simply leave it (Exc does not
work).

Thanks
 
Ken,

I pressed F12 when booting and found a menu.

But I could not leave this menu.

I ended up in Setup which I could leave, but I ended up back at the
Boot Menu.

When entering the Boot Menu, how can I simply leave it (Exc does not
work).

Thanks- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -
Click to expand...

Others

My admin and system password are not set.

If I set them what significance will this have.

Can the passwords be removed once set, or can they only be changed

I also noted that pageup/down does not work when trying to navigate
logs. Is there another key?

Thanks
 
You can buy a floppy drive for as little as $10 US or so, and install
it yourself. Installing it is very easy.

I have one here, which I use so seldom that I can't even remember the
last time. Nevertheless there is always the possibility that I have an
old file stored on a floppy that I need to see again. For $10, I'm
more comfortable having one just in case.
Click to expand...

Years ago, I bought a computer with an offer for a $50 USB floppy drive
with a $50 rebate, so I did it.

Now whenever & wherever I need a floppy, I plug it in. It's small and
light, and it works on laptops, all-in-ones, and even Macs.

Wowee.
 
Years ago, I bought a computer with an offer for a $50 USB floppy drive
with a $50 rebate, so I did it.

Now whenever & wherever I need a floppy, I plug it in. It's small and
light, and it works on laptops, all-in-ones, and even Macs.
Click to expand...


That's a great buy (obviously). I'd rather have an external floppy
drive than a built-in one, but I normally opt for the built-ins
because they are so inexpensive.
 
That's a great buy (obviously). I'd rather have an external floppy
drive than a built-in one, but I normally opt for the built-ins
because they are so inexpensive.
Click to expand...

Can someone reply to my questions
 
Ken Blake said:
That's a great buy (obviously). I'd rather have an external floppy
drive than a built-in one, but I normally opt for the built-ins
because they are so inexpensive.
Click to expand...

By the way, not only are floppy controllers much less common on
motherboards with the latest chipsets, from what we were told by Teac
in January, one of the main component manufacturers of the floppy
drive read head EOLed the component in December last year. I suspect
we won't even be able to buy floppy drives of any kind anywhere a year
from now, except for remaining stock in the supply chain.

--
Zaphod

Arthur: All my life I've had this strange feeling that there's
something big and sinister going on in the world.
Slartibartfast: No, that's perfectly normal paranoia. Everyone in the
universe gets that.
 
Looking at my boot order it looks like I boot in order: floppy, hard
drive, cdrom, usb device.

When I last rebooted, I looked at the lights on the tower. The CD lit
first, then A drive, then I believe the HD.

Can anyone explain this?

Thabnks
Click to expand...

Your boot order is wring. Read the very first reply, the one from Michael,
and make the changes to the order he described.

The lights are irrelevant.

Use F2 or Del, not F12, to get into the BIOS.

Up to now, you seem to have ignored good advice...
 
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