Can USB device work sans OS?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Mike Hollywood
  • Start date Start date
M

Mike Hollywood

I have a USB floppy drive and was wondering if
there is a way to boot from it using a windows 98
boot disk.
I believe USB requires you havean operating
system loaded to work, but I don't know where
I got that idea from.
I have not experimented in any way with this.

Thanks for thoughts.

Mike
 
Mike said:
I have a USB floppy drive and was wondering if
there is a way to boot from it using a windows 98
boot disk.
I believe USB requires you havean operating
system loaded to work, but I don't know where
I got that idea from.
I have not experimented in any way with this.
Click to expand...

It's certainly possible, but it requires BIOS support.
 
Hi Don,

As in the part that has the boot order? Like from CD, HD, Floppy, etc. Is
that where to look?
Mike
 
Mike said:
Hi Don,

As in the part that has the boot order? Like from CD, HD, Floppy, etc. Is
that where to look?
Mike
Click to expand...

Yep. Some BIOSes have a setting to boot from USB Device.


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Mike Hollywood said:
Hi Don,

As in the part that has the boot order? Like from CD, HD, Floppy, etc.
Is that where to look?
Mike
Click to expand...

Yes. You will also see during post that USB is activated when it detects IDE
and other devices. I use USB boot for running Memtest and other diagnostics
pretty much all the time now loaded on a USB thumb drive. I still hang on to
a floppy drive but really could easily do without if there were some other
way to load raid and/or skuzzy drivers at F6 when installing or repairing an
OS install. AFAIK, XP will not look anywhere except the floppy for these
drivers.

Ed
 
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