For Geek Oracle: Boot to CD

Poststructural Pub
1

How do you make Windows XP boot to CD? Or is it supposed to do that automatically if the CD is in the drive and is bootable?

2

It’s supposed to give you a little choice thing where you choose, “Boot from CD” when you put a bootable CD in.

3

You also have to set your system bios to allow booting from disk or cd drive before booting from C:

4

Windows XP has nothing to do with booting from CD. It’s all up to your
PC’s BIOS at that point. When you’re PC’s just starting to boot, you
should hear a single beep, and somewhere on the screen will be a
message to press DEL or F1 or some other key “for BIOS menu” or
“for setup menu” or somesuch. Press this key (it might take a few
seconds to actually get to the menu after you press the key, because
certain setup steps still have to happen. But, you have to press this
key before Windows starts to boot (when you see the Windows splash
screen, it’s too late, and you should press the reset button, or
CTRL-ALT-Delete to get back to the BIOS startup screen…)

When you get to your BIOS setup menu, you will have to change
the boot order. If you can figure out what BIOS you have (should
be somewhere on the startup screen, or in the menu), I might be
able to look up the steps you have to take, but every BIOS menu is
frustratingly different. Usually, there is a Boot Order option
somewhere down in the menus. Your HardDrive (or maybe your
floppy drive) is listed as the first boot device if you can’t currently
boot from CD. You will have to change this so the CD drive is the
first boot device, and the HardDrive is the second boot device.

Sorry to be so vague, but it’s hard to be specific without being there
with your computer, and looking at your specific hardware setup.

5

Some common key configurations for entering the bios:


AMI BIOS: (Del), (F1) or (F2)

Award BIOS: (Del) or (Ctrl)(Alt)(Esc)

Phoenix BIOS: (F1), (F2), or (Ctrl)(Alt)(Esc)

or for
Dell: try F1 or Del or Ctrl + Alt + Enter
Hewlett Packard: try F1
Compaq:try F10


If you are talking about older computers there are a large number of more or less insane combinations.

/MarcusR

6

While in the BIOS screen, you must set the boot sequence so that CD comes before Hard Disk.

Note: Older PC’s do not have CD drivers in the BIOS and require a floppy disk to start the system. That’s why Windows 98 and 95 systems came with a floppy disk to boot by.