ok I just made my life more difficult. my mom owns a very old laptop Pentium M 1.6. Forgot her administrator password. So i took the opportunity to format it since it's very slow. Laptop didn`t come with cd-rom, So i made a bootable USB drive with window XP ISO Once in Window XP installation, I wiped up the current partition and create a new one but setup says that the disk might be faulty or SCSI driver related problem when i tried to do a new window installation. So I thought I restart and boot with more drivers but now i can`t boot via USB!!! as there is no more selection for USB. My options available now during booting. 1. Internal HDD ( which i wiped out earlier ) 2. USB <but it's gone now> 3. Cardbus NIC 4. Onbroad NIC I did went into the BIOS and put USB as the first drive to load but it somehow won`t boot VIA USB anymore. So my question is, Is it still possible for me to boot VIA USB ? before i google other methods.
That's probably because Windows XP doesn't have the driver for your USB ports. Are you using Windows XP SP3? If you cannot get Windows XP SP3, then the best option is probably to remove the HDD and install it into a PC and install Windows XP on it, and then transfer the HDD back into the notebook.
Shouldn`t it be hardware related ? i think original OS was XP SP1 i boot with USB with XP SP3 Deleted off XP SP1, but couldn`t install XP SP3 now no more option to boot with USB now.
I don't think so. It looks like Windows just cannot "see" your USB ports because it lacks the necessary driver. You can also consider slipstreaming the USB driver into the XP SP3 installation. You will have to find out what USB driver you need for that notebook though... How to Slipstream Drivers Into Windows XP | eHow.com
I don't think so. I think you need to reread his problem again. He is talking about the motherboard boot selection missing the USB option. I don't think Windows or CD has anything to do with it.
Has deleting window XP affected the USB boot ? Maybe somehow it was using window driver. So i had the option, until i deleted it off. I dun have another old laptop to take out HD and reinstall. Looks like i need to install via network.
If it's a BIOS or hardware issue, why would deleting the Windows partition cause the boot option to disappear? But maybe we should look into the BIOS a bit more. Think you can get some photos of the BIOS screens, belikethat?
Since it is an old machine, things like that could happen. Who knows. This is the reason why I didn't reply earlier, since this is a very peculiar problem... Have you done a BIOS reset?
here the BIOS screen. i didn`t change BIOS setting. As you can see i set it to the highest followed by NIC. already tried to 'disable' and 'enable' USB by pressing 'spacebar' to on/off it. Maybe my bootable USB went wrong after failed window installation. will try to reboot my USB pendrive before i start venturing to.... NIC
Your BIOS shows the USB boot option.... Can you disable the other devices, leaving only the USB Storage Device? Then try booting with your USB drive. Also, I would like to see the other pages, to see if you may have inadvertently disabled something else which may affect the USB port.