Bootable USB device

donchulo · Post by **donchulo** » January 11th, 2006, 8:04 pm

Following the death of my internal CD drive I decided to invest in a USB drive to replace it. It works fine in Windows but I've noticed that it won't bootup from the beginning like my my old internal drive did. After research I discovered that I could do this by changing the BIOS settings but there doesn't seem to be "USB boot" option there. I updated the BIOS to the latest version (PhoenixBIOS 4.0 Release 6.0, Version: 0F0A ) but I still don't have that option. Is this a problem with the motherboard (HP 311282-001), the drive (LG GSA-2166D) or something else? By the way I'm running Windows XP Pro on a Compaq Evo n1020v. Any help would be really appreciated.

richh0323 · Post by **richh0323** » January 12th, 2006, 2:40 am

http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/device/st ... -boot.mspx Check this out, I saw another way I will try and find it for you too

donchulo · Post by **donchulo** » January 12th, 2006, 8:42 pm

Thanks for that. I found an interesting passage: 'BIOS must support INT 13h During the boot process, Windows assumes that support for communicating with the boot device, either hard disk drive or CD-ROM drive, is present in INT 13h when Windows loads because the NT Loader uses calls to INT 13h to access the disk. INT 13h support must comply with the "BIOS Enhanced Disk Drive Services - 2" specification and the "USB Mass Storage Specification for Bootability," The newer specification is considered the authority if the two specifications contradict each other.' Not sure my PC has this capability since it's nearly three years old.