Hi I have various USB devices eg card reader, USB drive, Pendrive. All work with other PC eg press F12 and select boot device. Unfortunately, with the subject PC, it does not recognise any USB device in boot, only when it finally gets to Windows. My idea was to install PCLinuxOS but there is no CDROM or FDD hardware.
Seems the BIOS is not capable of doing live USB on boot, only within Windows drivers.
Ive searched for a resolution and seems the only way is to install something like 'Plop'
http://www.plop.at/en/bootmanager.html#plpdisdThe BIOS on this machine is dated 2003.
Desired is to be able to partition the drive for both Windows and PCLinuxOS
Thanks,
Alistair.
Later...................
After using Plop as a bin in the Windows directory as shown below, you end up with a dual boot ability and USB works a treat.
Note the following allows you to run a liveCD when before the USB drives were not recognised. But it does NOT allow for Linux Grub on MBR in normal installation. So before
installing your LiveCD, check PLOP documentation further otherwise you may come unstuck.
Add line item is to be LAST in boot.ini:
Harddisk install using the Windows boot menu (2K, XP and VISTA)
Download the file [50]plpgenbtldr-0.7.zip and extract it.
* Create a directory like c:\plop. You can use any directory you
want.
* Copy plpinstc.com and plpgenbtldr.exe to your c:\plop directory.
* Rename plpinstc.com to plpbt.bin.
* As administrator/with administrator rights open a command shell and
change to c:\plop
* Then start plpgenbtldr
This program searches for the file plpbt.bin In the current
directory.
plpgenbtldr generates the file plpbtldr.bin.
* Adding to the boot menu. Windows 2K and XP is different to Windows
VISTA
+ Windows 2K, XP
add the line below to your c:\boot.ini
c:\plop\plpbtldr.bin="Install PLoP Boot Manager"
