Boot Sequence in BIOS?

[Tecumseh]

Hey, all ...

I've always been of the school that says the boot order should be: 1) Optical Drive (CD); 2) HD; 3) Floppy drive.

I'm building a new system and the MB (Intel D925XCV) installation manual says to set the HD first and then the Optical Drive. Is this something new or are some folks just trying to re-invent the wheel?

[geeksRus]

i dont see how it matters unless you want to boot from the CD...in that case set the CD as first boot device.

[shamus]

I've always been of the school that says the boot order should be: 1) Optical Drive (CD); 2) HD; 3) Floppy drive.

Me?
older school, although floppies are on the way out...
1)Floppy 2)CD 3)HD
with MS your gonna have to deal with dos at some point

[Platypus]

Well, yes, just have it how you want it.

I usually have 1. FDD 2. HDD 3. Optical

If I put in a boot floppy, I want it to supersede the hard drive. If I accidentally have a bootable CD in the drive, I don't want to find it's started up, but if I put in an empty HDD and Windows CD, the install will start.

Tecumseh, I think Intel's instruction relates to setting up a new machine. If the CD is ahead of the HDD in the boot order, when Windows is installed, the system will re-boot back into the install again instead of Windows. When the boot order is the other way round, the boot will be from the HDD without having to remove the CD.

[confus-ed]

i dont see how it matters ..

Its matters to some 'cos there's a 'thpppp' worth (a few milliseconds) of delay while it checks the boot sources, in ye olden times this was 'a good bit' (up to 5 seconds say), so the 'purists' will have you start from the 'expected' source straight away.

If I send 'em out the door they are set with hard-drive last as it saves explaining how to change it, & anyone who knows, can anyway, to their preference

[hudsonsmith]

On many systems if you set CD ahead of HD, it will prompt you before it boots from the CD (at least it does on mine ).

[confus-ed]

On many systems if you set CD ahead of HD, it will prompt you before it boots from the CD (at least it does on mine ).

Usually they just time out though & only come on if there's a bootable cd in ?

There's no one 'right' answer, as all bioses are fractionally different - some you can't even set order in, only a choice of which source.

[JeffO93]

I like to save the seconds by booting off the hard drive first. (Hey, an alien can abduct you faster than that, right?)
It would depend on who is going to use the computer and what kind of disks/devices are going to be used frequently.
Setting it to boot off a floppy too often gives the user the panicked situation where they boot to "Can't find NTLoader". If you look this up in tech books and on the Internet, it says your drive is probably corrupt/trashed, etc. They never start out with "First, make sure your computer isn't trying to boot off an ordinary floppy disk..." DOH!!

Most of our Dells have an F12 function built-in. That allows you to set BIOS to boot off the hard drive first, but if you hit F12, it will give you the option to boot off anything. This is a great idea that needs to be implemented throughout the industry.

I hate floppies. Nice to have an option, but they are my absolute last resort if nothing else is available.

Any modern motherboard tends to be able to boot off USB memory sticks. I have three bootable USB sticks, a bootable USB hard drive, and several bootable rescue CDs.

[Tecumseh]

Tecumseh, I think Intel's instruction relates to setting up a new machine. If the CD is ahead of the HDD in the boot order, when Windows is installed, the system will re-boot back into the install again instead of Windows. When the boot order is the other way round, the boot will be from the HDD without having to remove the CD.

I am setting up a new machine. Thanks to you and all the others for the clarification.