Need to change Boot to read cd drives

I want to make a CD boot disk but my boot sequence in bios needs to show this. I could use some step by step instructions. I think I start with f8 - GO INTO BIOS and i guess there is a check off where I click boot look for cd or something? I dont have a floppy drive (yea strange) but tons of other hard drives like flash disks etc that only take so much memory

sweetczz

Newbie Poster

12 posts since Feb 2004

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7 Years Ago

It's quite unlikely that F8 is the keypress to access BIOS setup. That's the keypress usually reserved for accessing Windows 'Safe Mode'. Most motherboards require the key to be pressed while the system is first powering up in order to access BIOS setup, although proprietary 'name brand' PCs may have a different keypress.

See this article for further information.

Once in BIOS setup look through the menus to find the items which related to 'Boot order' or 'Boot device'. The keys used to navigate the menus and make changes will be shown onscreen, so there's no need to describe them.

You will usually have a list of entries on an 'Advanced' menu which will indicate the order of boot devices, and the most useful method is to set CD-ROM as '1st boot device' and HDD-0 as '2nd boot device'. Some older systems may have a single setting for 'Boot Order' and you need to cycle through the available options to locate the most relevent one. Ensure you Saves the changes before exiting BIOS setup.

Some name brand systems will boot directly from CD without an onscreen message, but most assembled PCs will display an onscreen message asking you to "Press a key" to boot from CD, so you need to be watching the screen during the power-up process or you'll miss it, and the system will try to boot from hard drive or elsewhere regardless.