On Saturday 25 March 2006 14:37, Anne Wilson wrote: >On Saturday 25 March 2006 18:40, Paul Howarth wrote: >> Some BIOSes specify the CD/DVD drive in the "boot order" part of the >> setup menu, others (some Dells I've used) have a separate menu (the >> Dells use F12 to access it at boot time) which lets you boot from >> CD, USB etc. You'll need to poke around your BIOS menus anyway. > >When you boot up, most motherboards show a spash screen for a couple > of seconds, then start checking the ram (some people switch off these > features, but they are usually the default). At that point there are > a couple of seconds only when a message is displayed at the bottom of > the screen that tells you how to get to the BIOS settings. Hitting > Delete is a common one, with F2 as probably the second most common. > If you get to the right key in time it will finish the checks then > open up the BIOS screens. Read through them - they may surprise you, > and you never know when someone will ask you something related to > that. > Unforch, Compaq makes that impossible as they cover all that with a bootsplash 'Compaq' in big red letters, and you have to hit F keys randomly, and rapidly in order to get to what they euphamisticly call a bios, but other than clock setting and boot order on the one I have on the bench ATM, not much else is adjustable. Oh, and fast boot or check memory, I set that on the one time I hit it by accident, so now I have about 7 seconds to find the magic twangers pitch. Compaq=PITA, with broken legs. >In my experience the settings for boot order are usually on about the > third page, often labelled Advanced or something similar. > >One thing that would be very useful is for you to make a note of the > BIOS maker and version. Sometimes it helps people to help you if you > can give them that information. > >As for why it no longer boots from the CD/DVD - it's likely that > someone who has done some job for you on the computer changed the > setting. Many people feel that it is safer for the default to be to > boot from the first hard drive. That too, paranoia. But it keeps the kids from bringing in their games on infected cd's & floppies. Until they learn the trick and change it back when you're not looking... But we have the ultimate revenge, when we find games, porn or pie-rat music on a business machine, we don't care who's it is, it gets formatted & only what they need for that machines job reinstalled. The normal user of that one is warned including a note in the personel file the 1st time, 2nd time gets even more interesting, 3rd time discharged. >Anne -- Cheers, Gene People having trouble with vz bouncing email to me should add the word 'online' between the 'verizon', and the dot which bypasses vz's stupid bounce rules. I do use spamassassin too. :-) Yahoo.com and AOL/TW attorneys please note, additions to the above message by Gene Heskett are: Copyright 2006 by Maurice Eugene Heskett, all rights reserved.
