booting from USB dvd

[VJ]

Hello,

I decided to comletely reinstall the OS on my laptop using the supplied recovery DVD (came with a pre-installed Windows XP Pro Tablet 2005).

So I plugged in my Plextor PX-608U in the USB port, rebooted, entered the bios, changed the boot order (put CD rom before HDD), saved, and....
it didn't boot from the disk, but just went to the harddisk.

In the bios, support for legacy USB devices is enabled.

Does this mean I can't boot from a USB drive?
Are there other things I can try?
(FWIW, it also didn't boot from a Knoppix CD rom I know is bootable)


Jörg

[Taz]

Maybe it only boots with a specific DVD-ROM drive, i.e. one made by the same manufacturer as the laptop

[Evildead666]

If there's no option to boot from a USB-FDD USB-HDD or USB-CDRom then basically its a no go.

You could try setting "Boot other devices" and stuff like that, and then, disable the boot from HDD, to try and force it, but you may have to come back; so make sure the Bios isn't part of the Hard drive, like in old Compaq Machines...

[Jammrock]

As long as your motherboard is fairly new (last 1-2 years) you should have to the option in the boot manager (usually F12 at boot). If not flash your BIOS to the newest version and hopefully it will be there.

But you must have the device connected BEFORE you boot the computer for the BIOS to spot it and give it as an option to boot to.

[VJ]

The laptop is about one year old, there is a bios update but it needs some software (Deskclient) to flash and I can't get it configured correctly (so I can't flash it). There are no bios release notes. I'll try this software again, hopefully it works now.

In the boot menu, I have the options "floppy", "harddisk", "cd rom" and "network".

Oddly, it sees a usb memory as a floppy, and tries to boot from it when I set the floppy before harddisk in the boot order (it even shows the manufacturer and size in the bios). So the laptop can boot from usb devices by other manufacturers (memory is a transcend).But for some reason it doesn't boot from the Plextor (the drive is powered and the power switch is set to ON in stead of AUTO).

There also is a usb setting in bios regarding scsi-subclass devices; it is enabled.

Jorg

[schmosef]

Is there not an internal CD/DVD drive?

[VJ]

No, all it has onboard is a HDD, CF reader and SD reader.


Jörg

[VJ]

Ok, bios update worked, and the problem remains...


Jörg

[VJ]

Now this is odd!
I can boot using a Sony USB DVD drive at work...



Jörg