Setting your CMOS bios to boot from CD

To set your computers BIOS to boot from CD, watch the information displayed on the first screen when your computer powers up. You will see a line telling you to press a key to enter the BIOS settings. Depending on your bios brand, the key may be the Del or F1 or F2 or …. key, you get the idea. There is a listing of many of the brands and the keys for entering the BIOS at http://www.cyberwalker.net/faqs/reinstall-reformat-winxp/enter-BIOS.html

When you see the BIOS set up screen, look for the area where you can change your boot sequence. Different settings may be:

C,A: The system will firstly search for hard disk drive then floppy disk drive.

A,C: The system will firstly search for floppy disk drive then hard disk drive.

Note: New Award !BIOSs now offer 10 different boot sequence options of three drives each. In addition to the traditional drives A and C, options include IDE hard drives D, E, and F; plus a SCSI hard drive and a CD-ROM drive

a picture of this can be seen here: http://www.buildeasypc.com/sw/bios_setup_abf.htm

A couple of warnings are needed here:

1) Be sure to save your changes before exiting the BIOS!

2) “Be careful not to make any unintentional changes; changing the wrong settings can render your computer unusable. And be sure to write down the original settings for anything you change, so you can reset them easily if you need to”!

Credit: this last comment was from pcmag which has a long explanation of this process.

If all else fails and you find your older computers BIOS will not boot from CD please read Install Boot Floppy for a workaround to boot from the floppy to the CD.

–Created by sam