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

Question

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/mybios.jpg

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.

Answer 1

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.

Answer 2

None of the answers you got are right they are way off. Here is the right answer to your question, Once you have installed Linux on your hard drive windows will not be able to read the hard drive, windows and Linux are two different file format, though Linux can read MS FAT, FAT32 and NTFS formats windows Xp can only read FAT and FAT32. FAT stands for (File Allocation Table) You can/t install windows Xp from a USB jump drive It can only be installed from a CD/DVD drive, Boot your computer up with the ubuntu live disk look for Gparted in systems folder click on Gparted and it will start up the program it will find the hard drive, click on the partition click on delete, click on apply , once it is deleted then click on New partition, once you have made the partition you then format it to FAT32 , when the format is finished close ubuntu down take the cd out put the windows Xp disk in and reboot the operating system window should start the install procedure

Answer 3

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.

Answer 4

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.

Answer 5

Try inserting your USB device, restart and hit F12 during boot-up for one time boot devices.