booting automatically from HDD

Hi,

this is not as easy as the subject says!!!
I have a CD with OS image file.it reboots the computer once the OS image is installed.I want the machine to boot from HDD(but it's booting from CD and reinstalling the image). The whole process is automated and should not involve any user interaction.

1) Is there anyway by which we can change BIOS settings to boot from hard disk the second time(this should be mentioned in CD's autoexec.bat)???


My Objective::: once the image is installed it should boot from OS(HDD) next time automatically.
Any of ur suggestions and ways to solve the problem are welcome.
Thanks in advance for any kind of help.

Regards
Gaurav

Quote:

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Originally Posted by techie081

Hi,

this is not as easy as the subject says!!!
I have a CD with OS image file.it reboots the computer once the OS image is installed.I want the machine to boot from HDD(but it's booting from CD and reinstalling the image). The whole process is automated and should not involve any user interaction.

1) Is there anyway by which we can change BIOS settings to boot from hard disk the second time(this should be mentioned in CD's autoexec.bat)???


My Objective::: once the image is installed it should boot from OS(HDD) next time automatically.
Any of ur suggestions and ways to solve the problem are welcome.
Thanks in advance for any kind of help.

Regards
Gaurav

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if you have the bios boot first from the hard drive, then from the cd-rom you will have no problem as long as the hard drive doesn't contain an OS (or boot files) the first time it boots, (ie a blank formatted drive) if this is the case on the first boot it would look at the hard drive and not find an OS, so it would move to the CD find a bootable image and load. the second time it boots the hard drive would be bootable and would boot before the cd.

The question is who initiates the installation of the OS from the image. I assume it is being done with user intervention. In this case a boot loader similar to the one on Win2K or XP that requires to press a key in order to boot from CD (unless the hdd is empty) could be your solution.