Bypassing the Bios

[Dietmar]

Hi all,

I succeed to INSTALL XP direct from the XP CD
to my USB harddrive on a computer, that never
heard (hihi) anything about USB boot in his Bios.

I mean: It is possible to bypass the Bios.

I cant believe it, but it is true.

Nice to hear from you
Dietmar

 

[alexnnr]

Hi Dietmar,
Really "Das ist phantastisch" (sorry I don't know Deutch). We wait for
your comments.

Regards,
AlexNNR

 

[steves]

This is amazing... You have to get NTFS to read the Boot.ini file...
Perhaps a RamBoot, into some program that understands the USB hard
drive?

SteveS

 

[J.S.]

I mean: It is possible to bypass the Bios.
I cant believe it, but it is true.

What do you want to tell us with this? It would be of any worth for us
if you describe how you did that in detail.
Awaiting your report.

 

[Dietmar]

Hi J.S,

until now, I dont know exact what happens.

It seems, that XP itself can bypass the Bios, simple
if it knows all about the used chipset.

Try a search via Google with Grub USB boot bios bypass


Nice to hear from you
Dietmar

 

[alexnnr]

Hi Dietmar,

You said:
"It seems, that XP itself can bypass the Bios, simple
if it knows all about the used chipset."
If so, are there any possibilities to force USB 2.0 booting for a
computer that doesn't have this BIOS feature?

Regards,
AlexNNR

 

[Dietmar]

Hi Alex,

I say yes, if your USB controller has USB 2.0 velocity.
But until now I have only the idea but no working solution.

Until now, I dont know, how to force real XP or even XPE to ignore the
Bios.

The first test I did was the following:

I have an old computer from 2001, which can do USB 1.1 boot.
You have to wait minutes for minutes.
Then appears the desktop with my generic (hihi) XPE SP1 image (202 MB).

The USB controller there doesnt know anything from USB 2.0.
Now I succeed to install direct XPPro SP2 from a special slipstream CD
(with thousands of extra drivers)
to an USB harddisk to the same old computer.
And voila: Even with pure USB 1.1 the boottime is cut about a factor
of 10,
because(?) the real XPPro SP2 ignores the Bios in that case. (But
how?!)

The only idea I have is, that the thousands of extra drivers on the
slipstream SP2 CD make it possible for real XP SP2, to recognice exact
the chipset from that computer and anything else is right detected at
once. So(?!) the Bios isnt needed ???


Nice to hear from you
Dietmar