Most often, we think about the BIOS (Basic Input/Output System) only when we need to reinstall the operating system and need to somehow set it to boot from a disk or flash drive. I often wrote about this in articles such as:, and others. Now I want to put it together and refer only to this article when necessary. This article will be useful for all BIOS versions and for different companies. A kind of single reference book

The first thing you need to know is that BIOS is divided by manufacturer and version.

To change boot method in BIOS- You must first enter it.
You can, of course, find out what version and manufacturer of your BIOS is from the manual that came with your computer.
You can also find out by looking at the line at the top of the black screen when loading (the manufacturer will be indicated there).
Well, then enter the BIOS, knowing what it is for you.

Some BIOS versions do not have such a screen showing lines. There’s just a logo there and at the bottom it says something like “Press F2 to enter SETUP,” which means press F2. If there is just a logo and there are no inscriptions, press ESC, and then del or f2

Here is a small list of manufacturers and keyboard shortcuts for entering BIOS:

Also at the bottom of the black screen there are keys for entering the BIOS and for displaying a list that contains available devices for booting and so that you can boot from it. But more about him at the end of the article.

Now you need to load a flash drive or disk.
Let's look at a few examples that differ from the BIOS manufacturer.

Setting up Award Bios to boot from a flash drive or disk:
The main window looks like this, in which we need the second item:

On a note:

Another version of this BIOS:

I've only seen this on old computers from ten years ago, before 2003. The main menu looks like this:

How to choose what to boot from in AMI BIOS
If, after entering the Bios, you see such a screen, it means you have AMI BIOS:

Another AMI BIOS, but everything is clear here:

Setting up Phoenix-Award Bios to boot from a flash drive
If, after entering the Bios, you see such a screen, then you have Phoenix- Award BIOS:

Setting up EFI (UEFI) Bios with a graphical interface for booting from a flash drive
Now this won’t surprise anyone. Almost all new computers are equipped with a similar shell. You can read more about it in the article.
When loading, at the bottom of the screen there is a “Boot Priority” section, where you can use the mouse (by dragging) the pictures to set the desired boot order.
You can also click the “Exit/Advanced mode” button in the upper right corner and select Advanced mode in the window that appears.

How to boot from a flash drive or disk without entering BIOS
This is what I wrote about almost at the very beginning of the article.
This is when you need to press a key once and a window will appear with a boot selection. This method does not change the BIOS settings.
Usually Award BIOS prompts you to press "F9" to bring up the boot menu, and AMI asks you to press "F8". On laptops this may be the “F12” key.
In general, look at the bottom line and look for items like “Press F8 for BBS POPUP” or “Press F9 to Select Booting Device after POST”.

Why can't I boot from a flash drive into BIOS?

Possible reasons:

On older computers there is no way to boot from USB flash drives at all. If a newer BIOS does not exist, then the project may help.
1) Download from the link above latest version"Plop Boot Manager" and unpack it.
2) The archive contains the following files: plpbt.img – an image for a floppy disk, and plpbt.iso – an image for a CD.
3) Write the image to disk and boot from it (or from a floppy disk).
4) A menu will appear in which we select our flash drive and boot from it.

A small explanation of disk designations when selecting:

Do not forget, after you have done what you wanted (namely, why you changed the boot in the BIOS) - return the boot settings back so that the computer boots with hard drive.

Important Note: all materials are presented for informational purposes and for the sake of educating blondes.

Inset. Live CD(also LiveCD and CD Live Distro - English live CD, pronounced "live see-di") - an operating system that boots from removable media(CD, DVD, USB drive, etc.), which does not require installation on a hard drive to function. The same concept also refers to media with such OS (sometimes a distinction is made between LiveCD, LiveDVD and LiveUSB depending on the media).

St. Petersburg ordeals, or why USB-CDROM

As I expected, the option is stupid to throw installation files operating system didn't work for the card. A more subtle approach is needed here. The study revealed significant differences (and also difficulties) in recording bootable flash drive, compared to CD. Here they are:

1) The need to spend a little more time in the BIOS

Many people are generally frightened by the bluish color of this program and the many English words, and in our case we have to move along it. Moreover, USB turned out to be so “inferior” that support for it is often disabled by default, and especially outdated versions missing at all (can be treated by updating the BIOS). The BIOSes themselves can be very different from each other, and you will have to navigate each of them again.

2) Simulation of booting from a USB drive

Even if we were lucky enough to see in the BIOS the ability to boot from using usb, then there will be several options for such loading at once (although not always). Moreover, each of them is an imitation of loading from other devices (for example, USB-FDD And USB-ZIP- imitation of loading from a floppy disk, USB-HDD- from the hard drive, USB-CDROM- from an optical CD). This introduces some confusion into solving the problem.

3) Correct formatting of the flash drive and linking to the manufacturer

Before writing information to a flash card, you must format it. And this is done in a special way in order to correspond to one of the selected download options, marked in the paragraph above. What adds piquancy is the fact that for each flash drive there is a specific set of utilities from the manufacturer, with the help of which formatting and direct recording of boot data is carried out.

Looking ahead a little

I started getting acquainted with software tools for creating a bootable flash drive with FlashBoot - Excellent multifunctional software. Its trouble is that it supported the progressive USB-HDD format, which was not represented in my BIOS. I do not provide links, since this does not affect the subject of the article.

The second massive attempt involved a powerful contraption WinSetupFromUSB. It features support for simulating floppy disks (USB-FDD and USB-ZIP). After persistent battles with minimal knowledge and mastering the program, I finally managed to set up a flash drive for loading using the USB-ZIP method (which, due to the intensity of passions, is worthy of being reflected in a separate article). When the system started, it even wrote, they say, Start booting and all that. After which the black screen with this text froze for an indefinite time. I didn’t wait a couple of hours and rejected toys with a virtual floppy.

So, I have the method at my disposal USB-CDROM. Google provided much less information about him. To implement it, we need to format the flash drive so that the system begins to see our device both as a CD drive and as an additional HDD, For example. The first partition contains the operating system (in our case LiveCD), the second partition is used as a drive where you can throw additional programs(for example, a fresh working antivirus). Beauty! This the only way, which actually worked on my machine, will be discussed later.
Actually I didn't search well. The USB-HDD option is often found in the Hard Disc boot submenu

Preparatory stages

First, let's take care of what to write on the flash drive. That is, we need a bootable distribution (image) of the operating system (file with the extension .iso). You can find a ready-made image on the Internet or make it yourself by gutting original disc with Windows (we don’t take Linux into account), but this is worth a separate topic

Dancing with the BIOS

Working in the BIOS is perhaps the most intimidating and unknown part of the whole business. It requires at least basic knowledge of the English language, the ability to identify words such as USB, Boot, etc. among other foreign words. Unfortunately, there are so many BIOSes that it is impossible to reflect all the modifications and their menus in the article. I will describe the stages of work using my computer as an example.

1. Get into the BIOS

You can jump there when you turn on the computer (when the letters are running on a black background) by repeatedly pressing (to be sure) the Delete key (less often F2 or Escape).

As a result, we get to the main point BIOS menu. For me it looks like this:

2. Enable USB support.

It often happens that USB is disabled by default (Disabled value), and the BIOS “does not see” the inserted flash drive. It is clear that in this case any attempts to boot from it are doomed to failure. The main problem is to find the menu item in which the setting we need is located. In our example, it sits on the fourth line from the left - Integrated Peripherals(see picture above). If we go there, we will see the following picture:

As can be seen from the figure, suspicions are cast USB parameters Controller and USB Device Legacy Support. In the figure they are already enabled (Disabled - disabled, Enabled - enabled). However, USB settings can have completely different names, and you may not see exactly the same picture on another computer. That is, all this will be called something else. The keyword to search for, as you understand, is USB. To help the inquisitive mind of the user, I recommend that you familiarize yourself with the list of possible settings and brief description each of them. Let the seeker find.

3. Set the download order

Having turned on USB, you need to force the BIOS to boot from it first. The order of priority in our example is determined by the group of settings Advanced BIOS Features

Also, quite often the boot order is hidden in the menu item Boot or in combinations with this word. In the figure above, CDROM is indicated as the First Boot Device. Following the logic of the intended actions, we change the field value to USB-CDROM. The second device (Second Boot Device) can be the Hard Disk. The work is completed, exhale, save the settings and exit (usually F10 - Save & Exit). "Hot keys" and their purposes are indicated at the bottom of the screen.

It also happens: no matter how much we look for where to turn on USB, we cannot find it. And there are no options in the boot order from USB. Most likely, this is the most unpleasant case - the BIOS is outdated and does not support USB. In this case, soap up the rope and stand on a stool, go to the BIOS manufacturer’s website and update the version.

And finally. For those who want to get to know this funny little beast called BIOS a little closer, there is a small bonus in store.

Showdown with a flash drive

Inset. Controller(English controller - regulator, control device) - control device in electronics and computer technology

If you have an exotic controller that is not included in the list, you will have to go to the controller manufacturer’s website and scour in search of necessary programs. A reasonable question arises: how can we understand which controller our flash drive is on? This is done simply. Download the useful utility ChipGenius, insert the USB flash drive into the port and run the program. This is what she gave for my Kingston:

So, we have decided on the controller (skymedi), let's turn to software this manufacturer. They turn out to be (according to the corresponding instructions) a set of utilities SK6211BA-20090227.
After unpacking the downloaded archive on the desktop, run the file SK6211_20090227_BA.exe

My flash drive was detected on one of the 8 ports, as symbolized by the inscription Ready. Press the button Advance ( Advanced settings). We get to a new window:

This is a blank window (with inactive fields). To the only active field Password(Password) enter 123456 and click Check. After this, the program will automatically select the settings, as in the screenshot below. However, you need to manually register PreCopyPath(after pressing the Browse button, select the PreCopy directory, which is located in the folder with the downloaded program).

The setup is not finished yet. Press the button Multi-Partition and we find ourselves in the third window, intended for additional settings. The most important things here are the checkboxes Enable CDROM, Enable CDROM booting and field ISO Image, where we specify the path to the pre-downloaded LiveCD image. The rest is filled in automatically, as in the screenshot:

By clicking OK, we roll back to the previous window, where in the Config File field we enter the name of our new configuration (for example, Kingston_4G). Next, we finally save the settings (Save) and return to the main program window. Select a button Auto-LLF and we wait...

Formatting and recording have begun.

Upon completion, we safely remove the device, and when reconnected, the system already sees two devices instead of one flash drive.

We send the computer to reboot and boot safely from the flash drive. It must be said that the newly-minted LiveUSB installed without problems, and besides, the operating speed was many times faster than its CD counterpart due to high-speed data exchange. If I understand correctly, the program for the skymedi controller from the example considered can knock out only 1 partition from a flash drive for a CD drive. This means, unfortunately, it will not be possible to burn a LiveCD and a full-fledged image onto the card at the same time. However, as a test, nothing prevents you from throwing an assembly with an integrated LiveCD onto a flash drive and getting a bootable contraption “for all occasions.” In addition, it is quite possible that this limitation can be bypassed on other controllers. Need to check.

My CD-ROM doesn't work. I downloaded the OS image file to my hard drive and burned it onto a 2 gigabyte flash drive using the Ultra ISO program. However, I can't find the flash drive in the BIOS. My BIOS is Award. Here's what's there: Floppy; LS120; Hard Disk; CD-ROM; Zip100; USB-FDD; USB-Zip; USB-ROM; LAN I tried changing to USB-FDD, USB-ROM, USB-Zip, Zip100. Then I did everything as described. However, when I exit the BIOS, the computer reboots and boots from the hard drive. I can't figure out where I'm making a mistake. Thank you very much for the help.

Zero | November 3, 2013, 04:32
Find the simple and fast option yourself - http://setting.ucoz.ru/index/kak_ustanovit_windows_xp_s_fleshki/0-14

helg | 16 February 2012, 21:24
I also have a similar problem. It is not necessary to set the BIOS to boot from USB. When loading, just go to boot menu. However, I converted a bunch of these bootable flash drives. Various utilities different ways, with different “fillings” and this is what I have so far:
1. Bootable flash drives created by Acronis always work on all computers with USB. Apparently because they are “Linusox”.
2. Other bootable flash drives I create work on relatively new computers and do not work on old ones.
It seems that I came across methods for creating bootloaders based on Linux, but I haven’t gotten around to experimenting yet.

Sergey | 12 February 2012, 06:24
For Windows installations The XP flash drive must be bootable, otherwise it won’t work. Type “bootable flash drive” (without “) in the search bar of your browser and read the instructions on how to make a flash drive bootable. The image must be written to a flash drive and not copied. In the BIOS - either USB-ZIP or ZIP-100. If your computer more than 5 years, it is unlikely to work, because they did not yet support loading from a flash drive.

Cuanza | February 11, 2012, 11:59
Disconnect all USB devices except the bootable USB flash drive. Enter the BIOS and try setting the USB-ZIP option. Save.

money | 11 February 2012, 11:41
In my opinion, you need to do this: during system startup, press F8, as a result, all connected devices from which you can start should be displayed in the form of a table; after that you need to select the one you need.
If it still boots from the hard drive, it means the flash drive is wrong. In addition, 2 gigabytes will not be enough to run the system...

G.Balakhchi | February 11, 2012, 10:19
1. If you write to a flash drive image of a tough disk, then from such a flash drive you can restore old system, and not install a new one. You need to burn the OS distribution installer image to the flash drive. Of course I mean to burn the image, not the image file with ISO extension and others.
I believe, after all, that you wrote down what you need, i.e. OS installer, although this does not directly follow from the question.
2. Try to format the flash drive as USB-FDD, this can be done using the HP Drive Key Boot Utility (http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/SoftwareDescription.jsp?swItem=MTX-UNITY-I23839 ), it formats the flash drive and sets the flash drive emulation parameter (USB-FDD or USB-HDD). There are other utilities as well.
Well, then you know how to act.

yang | February 10, 2012, 10:51 pm
In the BIOS, enable "Other boot devices" (I don't remember how to say it in English) and put Zip100 as the first boot device.

yang | 10 February 2012, 22:45
Find the WinXP.BOOT.USB.DEVICE file online. The file is distributed as an exe file, accompanied by detailed instructions by recording onto a USB flash drive and then installing Windows XP from it.

Alexander | 10 February 2012, 17:17
Thank you very much for your answers! I downloaded it onto the flash drive exactly as instructed. I tried using hotkeys. When exiting the BIOS, I pressed F10, but to no avail.
Cuanza, thank you for your answer. The trouble is that I can’t find the parameter in the BIOS that is needed for the flash drive, but I tried: USB-FDD, USB-ROM, USB-Zip, Zip100. No result. I'm ready to use floppy disks for installation, since CD-ROM does not write.

Alexander | 9 February 2012, 20:28
Option one: simply written to a flash drive ISO image, but you need to go through the menu: Bootstrap - Create a hard disk image. Option two: you may not need to go into the BIOS, but when booting the system you can select boot options using hotkey(F12; Esc; etc.). Option three: maybe the F10 key was not pressed after exiting the BIOS?

This is a question from the archives. Adding replies is disabled.

Have you ever wondered what kind of USB-FDD device is this that appears in Bios/Uefi and from which you can supposedly boot? I think you can guess that we are talking about magnetic floppy disks, which are a thing of the past. But why then is this item still present in laptop firmware if no one needs it?

In this note I will tell you what I managed to find out about this.

Recently I came across such an ancient computer that does not even know how to boot from USB. I had only seen one of these in my entire life before. Well, it's understandable usb flash drives There weren't any before, and when they appeared, they weren't that cheap. This patient's Bios offers boot device options from the realities of that time: USB-FDD, USB-Zip, USB-CDROM and network boot.

An easy but uninteresting way is to write the operating system to optical disk(booting over the network is hardcore, I didn’t want to do that). This option is also inconvenient because the OS is constantly updated, and as a result, the disk burning procedure would have to be done periodically, which is inconvenient. With flash drives, everything is simpler in this regard.

But how can you force this mammoth to boot from a flash drive? Here I became interested in the usb-fdd and usb-zip items. Remember those floppy disks? On standard size floppy disks you can write only 1.44 Mb, so you can’t write any operating system there =) But what if you write it there a bootloader that would allow booting from USB flash drives, thus bypassing BIOS restrictions?

Ok, we've sorted out the tools. But how can I now make a bootable floppy disk with this bootloader? I don’t have an external floppy drive/floppy drive, nor do I have a floppy disk itself. Of course, you can burn a CD with this bootloader, and then boot from a flash drive, but still, is it possible to somehow get by without a disk at all?

I Googled for a very long time, Yandexil, How can you make a flash drive appear to the computer as if it were an inserted floppy disk? A lot of ancient rubbish comes up (from about 2002 - 2010), which basically only lists these devices, but nothing at all about emulation.

But I still managed to achieve this. To do this, you just need to know that there was no mbr on the floppy disks, but the data went straight away. Although I didn’t dig deep there, I simply used dd to write a floppy disk image from the developer’s website onto a flash drive. Then the name of the flash drive with Plop Boot Manager appeared in the list of boot devices opposite the USB-FDD item.

It doesn’t cause anything but a smile, just pampering. I don’t know, maybe it’s possible to emulate a mega cool floppy disk with a capacity of a whole gigabyte, for example, but I decided to give it up. (Here’s something interesting about a floppy disk larger than 1.4 Mb.) For the first time in my life, I just encountered the fact that I’m booting from this point in UEFI firmware =) Why this point was left in modern firmware is a mystery to me.

Well, as for USB-ZIP devices, Wikipedia helped me here, since I had never even heard of such devices. As I understand it, these are multilayer floppy disks that appeared just at the dawn of USB flash drives, so they died almost without spreading. As you can see in the first screenshot, this item is no longer available in modern firmware (at least in this firmware).

And by the way, this plop bootloader was never able to load me with an operating system from a flash drive. It starts up, but when you select the usb item, it tries to load drivers usb1.1, then 2.0, then 3.0, after which it gives an error:
Boot Error No Boot Device Found. Please retry it.
I also tried burning it to disk, booting from it, it starts, but still doesn’t want to boot from the USB flash drive. So for ancient computers, the only option left is to burn a disk with an operating system. Correction: I tested this on a modern computer on which I burned the disc and it had this error. But on an ancient computer (where the BIOS cannot boot from USB flash drives), I checked the ability to boot from a USB flash drive (using a burned disk with Plop boot manager) and was surprised that it worked. I don’t know why this is so, perhaps modern BIOSes have their own drivers for working with usb devices and do they somehow conflict with the plop drivers?

By the way, according to my feelings, on an ancient computer loading from a dvdrom is still faster than from a cdrom with a plop disk and an inserted flash drive. Although on a modern computer it was the other way around: it takes much longer to load from a disk than from a flash drive. Maybe plop mistakenly uses usb1.1 instead of usb2.0.

and one more thing: I recently saw one program “BOOTICE”, which can restore mbr. So I saw it in the list possible options Plop Boot Manager MBR. We need to figure out what/why it is there and integrate it into ms-sys.

So there is a way out. But in order not to depend on this magic disk, you can try to update/modify the BIOS on your computer, although it’s easier to throw it away.

For many less experienced users personal computers It's no secret that to reinstall the operating system you need to BIOS settings depending on the device from which the OS will be installed.

So, in some models today they are already outdated motherboards When setting device boot priority in the BIOS, you can see names such as USB FDD and USB HDD.

In this article we will tell you what these devices are and which one should be installed first to boot from a flash drive.

What are these devices?

USB HDD refers to boot devices such as USB flash drives And external USB hard disks, which have become widespread.

External hard drive, also known as USB HDD, inside of which there is a regular 2.5 hard drive

And USB FDD is an external drive, also connected via USB, but for floppy disks. Yes, yes, those same magnetic 3.5 floppy disks that modern youth discovered only from pictures in textbooks. This is why modern BIOSes do not have this item in the boot options. After all, floppy disks became extinct a long time ago.

USB floppy drive for floppy disks with a capacity of 1.44 MB

What to choose to boot from a flash drive?

The answer is obvious - USB HDD. Usually, if the flash drive is bootable and inserted into the working USB port, then opposite the USB HDD its name will appear:

The name of the bootable flash drive opposite the USB HDD

In even older BIOS there are no names: