How to boot from usb flash without bios support and without cdrom and floppy

ijaz1976

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Nov 29, 2011
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Hi!
i want to know that is there anyway to boot from a usb flash drive where the bios does not support usb booting and no floppy or cdrom is connected.
because i have an old system which does not allow to boot from usb drive and also i do not have a cdrom or floppy attached.
thanx in advance
 

plasmastorm

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Oct 18, 2008
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removed the hdd then make a boot partition on it. copy over all the data needed for setup (i.e. windows stup files) and create an auto installer.

alternatively do the easy thing and plug in a cd drive, save yourself the time and hassle
 

ijaz1976

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Nov 29, 2011
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hi plasmastorm
i did not understand what you said. i want to boot the system with regular 2gb or 4gb usb flash drive. my system bios has no usb boot support and also do not have cdrom or floppy drive atthached but i have made my usb flash drive bootable with some software. now how to boot the system with this flash to install windows.
 
I strongly suspect that if the BIOS does not support booting from USB, given that booting is done through the BIOS, you can't boot from USB.

It's like asking how to fly across the ocean in your car. Some cars just won't do it.

What motherboard and version of BIOS are we talking about? Could a BIOS upgrade enable support for this vital function? ("vital" is not sarcasm - I have a thumb drive that boots into five different utility environments.)

(prepares to be infantilised by more experienced members who have done this)
 

syn4ps

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Jul 20, 2012
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i know it's an old tread but it might bu usefull for someone else, to do that you will need an other pc connected to te same network as your other old-PC, so on your PC wich you have windows install on ( i presume ) use Tftpd32 it's a dhcp and network booting daemon.

Download grep4dos

Set tftpd32 to have grldr as boot file.

Download plop boot manager

on the old-PC set it to a PXE-boot or network boot.

turn off dhcpd from your router of you're using it

Boot the old-pc

once your in grep, select command line

type in :

map --mem (pd)/plpbt.img (fd0)
map --hook
root (fd0)
chainloader +1
boot

then you'll be in plop boot manager and you'll be able to boot from usb from now

this is the only way i've found for my old fujitsu laptop. doesn't support usb booting, neither have a floppy/cd-rom