Boot From USB Drive

How to Boot From CD

This guide shows you how to boot from USB drive and also how to boot from CD.

If you want to boot from USB or CD follow these steps! Also discover how to boot from flash drive and how to boot from USB hard drive disks.

To get your computer to boot from CD/DVD/USB disk you have to open something on your computer called the "BIOS" (also sometimes known as the "CMOS") and make a small change.

This sounds complicated but it's easy and safe to do. Simply follow these instructions:

1. Switch off your computer.

2. Once it's switched off - switch it back on again - and immediately look for an option that reads something like "F2: Setup". This is how it looks on my computer:

Here's a close up of the above screen...

Once you've identified which key allows you into the setup, repeatedly hit that keyboard button until a new screen loads.

By the time you've worked out which button loads the Setup, you'll probably find that Windows has already started booting. If this happens, simply restart the PC again and immediately start pushing the Setup button (e.g. F2).

You'll know that you've done this correctly if a screen like this loads:

Once you're in the BIOS, navigate to anything that's labelled "Boot", "Boot Sequence", "Boot Order", "Boot Priority" or similar.

You may have to enter an "Advanced" menu first before you find any boot options.

To boot from USB drive, CD, flash drive or USB hard drive, you need to make sure the CD/DVD/USB option (whichever is relevant to you) is selected as the first boot device (look at the screen above).

Some BIOS systems just have an order of boot priority, where the computer tries to boot from the first item in the list, and then the second if that fails, and so forth. If your BIOS works in this way, you need to move the CD/DVD or USB option (whichever is applicable to you) to the top of the list (as it is in the screen below).

To move a boot device, you usually need to press the F5 (up) and F6 (down) buttons, or the Page Up (up) and Page Down (down) buttons. Somewhere on the screen should be a key that tells you which keyboard buttons change which values though.

Once the BIOS is configured to boot from CD/DVD, flash disk or USB device, look for a exit saving changes (or similar) option and use it.

Provided a bootable disk has been inserted into your PC, it should now boot from it.

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