Missing External Boot Options from BIOS.

Question

Hello,

I'm currently in the process of restoring an old computer to factory condition to preserve, however it appears that any attempt to boot it externally has failed. I'm trying to reinstall the old Windows XP Operating System onto it with an external optical drive, as it's internal one is in need of replacing.

However both in the boot menu and the boot device priority menu within it's BIOS, there is no option to boot from the external optical drive. I have used that drive before to boot up another computer and it worked fine.

To make sure that it is a problem with external USB devices, I attemped to test whether a USB drive with Ubuntu preloaded (without actually installing it) would be displayed or could boot from it, however I had no luck and the USB drive didn't even show up on the boot menu or the BIOS boot device priority menu. I tested the USB ports from within it's current OS and they all work fine. As It's current OS is Windows XP SP3, and I only have a disk with XP SP1 it will not re-install from within Windows.

Any help would be greatly appreciated,

Thanks,

James.

Answer 1

Hi TomJeson64,

Thanks for your response, I just realised that I forgot to mention in the original post that, in the past it was able to boot via USB drives and other external optical drives. Thanks for your suggestion to replace the internal optical drive, I am on the lookout for one, hopefully though there is a way to get it to recognise USB devices as Boot devices again though.

Regards,

James.

Answer 2

The motherboard might be to old to have feature to boot from external CD drive. You might have to replace the internal CD driver.