Booting Older PC from USB Flashdrive

[M]

My PC does not support booting from a USB drive and their is no BIOS update
available for the motherboard to enable it. Before the days of CD booting
being supported by the BIOS if was possible to use a floppy disc to boot the
CD ROM. I would like to do the same to boot from a USB drive. I would like
to make or download a floppy and have Googled, tried
http://www.bootdisk.com/ without success. I will be glad of all
suggestions.

 

[Richard Urban]

You are a bit confused.

Before booting from a CD became common, you were able to BOOT from a floppy
which would install the requisite drivers necessary to "use" a CD in DOS.
Therefore, you could boot from the Windows 98 setup floppy and install
Windows 98 from a CD. But, you could NOT boot from a CD. The hardware just
did not support the function.

The same holds true for USB flash drives. If the hardware doesn't support
the function, you are just not going to be able to do it.

--


Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User

Quote from George Ankner:
If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!

 

[Malke]

My PC does not support booting from a USB drive and their is no BIOS
update
available for the motherboard to enable it. Before the days of CD
booting being supported by the BIOS if was possible to use a floppy
disc to boot the
CD ROM. I would like to do the same to boot from a USB drive. I
would like to make or download a floppy and have Googled, tried
http://www.bootdisk.com/ without success. I will be glad of all
suggestions.

I'm a little confused by your post. In your first sentence you say that
your computer doesn't support booting from a USB device (too old). In
the last sentence you say you'd like to download a floppy so you can
boot from a USB drive.???

If your computer's BIOS doesn't support booting from a USB device and
there is no BIOS update to enable this, you can't do it.

The floppy boot disks that enabled DOS to "see" the CD-ROM drive have
CD-ROM drivers on them. Bootdisk.com has those.

If you want more specific help, please post back clarifying exactly what
you are trying to do.

Malke

 

[M]

Thanks for both your replies. I would like to experiment with
http://xpe.collewijn.info/page/pe2usb.php and http://www.u3.com/ on
operating system on a flash drive soon to become available.
I can't accept that you can't use a floppy to boot the CD ROM because I have
used this method to run the Knoppix live CD on an ancient Pentium and this
is mentioned here http://www.computing.net/linux/wwwboard/forum/27638.html
I can't see much difference in principal between using a boot floppy to load
CD ROM drivers to using a boot floppy to load USB drivers. Maybe I have
misunderstood something.

 

[Vanguard]

My PC does not support booting from a USB drive and their is no BIOS
update available for the motherboard to enable it. Before the days of CD
booting being supported by the BIOS if was possible to use a floppy disc
to boot the CD ROM. I would like to do the same to boot from a USB drive.
I would like to make or download a floppy and have Googled, tried
http://www.bootdisk.com/ without success. I will be glad of all
suggestions.

Well, if you can find DOS-mode drivers for your USB device(s) along with the
device-specific drivers for the USB device that you want to plug-in (since
there won't be any registry to lookup the definition of the USB device that
you plug in) then you put them on the bootable floppy and then ACCESS the
files on your USB device.

http://www.bootdisk.com/usb.htm

A Google search on "+DOS +USB" will show other possibilities.

 

[Richard Urban]

Thanks for both your replies. I would like to experiment with
http://xpe.collewijn.info/page/pe2usb.php and http://www.u3.com/ on
operating system on a flash drive soon to become available.
I can't accept that you can't use a floppy to boot the CD ROM because I
have used this method to run the Knoppix live CD on an ancient Pentium and
this is mentioned here
http://www.computing.net/linux/wwwboard/forum/27638.html I can't see much
difference in principal between using a boot floppy to load CD ROM drivers
to using a boot floppy to load USB drivers. Maybe I have misunderstood
something.

********************************

You have got to learn the difference between booting and running!

Booting from a floppy to run Knoppix is NOT THE SAME as booting from the
Knoppix CD. Booting from a Windows 98 setup floppy and running the setup
program on the CD IS NOT booting from the CD. In each case you "booted" from
the floppy!

If your hardware does not support booting from a CD or USB device you just
ain't gonna do it!

I am so sorry that you can not accept that!


--


Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User

Quote from George Ankner:
If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!

 

[M]

You are correct, I have failed to make the distinction between booting and
running. Thank you for correcting me on this point.