Monday, November 22, 2010

How do I change my BIOS to boot from USB instead of the hard drive?

My BIOS does support booting from USB and I'm able to get into the BIOS. Here's a picture of the boot order screen in my BIOS:



http://img12.imageshack.us/img12/6746/my



As you can see, there are two drives listed in the ';hard drive'; section. The first is the internal hard drive, the second is the USB drive that I would like to boot from. I tried disabling the internal hard drive (with shift+1, as it says to), and when I tried to boot, I got an error message:



PXE-E61: Media test failure, check cable

PXE-M0F: Exiting PXE ROM.



I am able to boot from a CD without a problem, whether or not the internal hard drive is disabled in the BIOS. I also know that the USB I'm trying to use works and is bootable. The internal hard drive in the computer is dead.How do I change my BIOS to boot from USB instead of the hard drive?
if you go into your bios settings there should be a way to change the boot order. if you have a newer computer you should see usb in the boot order. if it is there then move it above the hard drive.How do I change my BIOS to boot from USB instead of the hard drive?
There are a couple of things I can think of that might be causing the problem. One, there is no operating system on the USB drive to boot. Two, the boot order is being interrupted before getting to the USB drive, you should scroll down and highlight the USB device and press F5 until it is at the top of the list, and then press F10 to save the changes. Three, there is something wrong with your USB device, or it is not compatible with the BIOS. If it's not compatible with the BIOS, you should check if there is a BIOS update on the manufacturer's site.



Hope that helps.
To boot to your USB drive I recommend this:



Make the hard drive the primary boot device in the sequence. Based on your picture you would use F5 or F6 to change the order.



Then within the Hard drive you should make the USB the first device that it looks to for booting.
Try inserting your USB device, restart and hit F12 during boot-up for one time boot devices.

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