Boot from CD how do I ?

[David L]

How do I set my computer to boot from CD?
I need step by step instructions as I have limited understanding.:oo:
To back up I have purchased ( Acronis ) a program that makes an image of the hard drive. In the case of a crash it tells me to boot from CD with a bootable disk I have made.

[TermiMonster]

You need to go into you're computers bios and set it to boot from CD. How to do that depends on your computer, to some extent. When you first turn it on, hit the delete key a few times. On some, its the F12 or some other F.. key.
When in bios, it also depends on your computer, but usually under something like advanced settings you can set the boot order of your system e.g. first hard drive 1, second CD, third floppy drive, etc. From memory you may have to look around a bit and set the option of booting from CD to on.
Save you settings and exit.
Cheers

TM

[Geoff Dean]

If it is a Mac, place bootable cd in drive and shut down.
(usually install disk supplied with computer)
(You can make one, but it is that long since I have had to, that I can't remember how too.)

Start up holding down the "C" key. Continue holding key until computer has booted. This can take anywhere between 1-5 mins depending on speed/type of Mac.

If it is an IBM / PC I can't help.

[K_S]

DL

I just googled "boot from cd" and got heaps to pick from - dive in.

[munruben]

Why do you want to boot your computer from the CD. I will assume you want to install Windows.
As your computer is booting up it does a POST that is Power on self test. to check everything is ok with the computer. As your computer goes through this test look carefully at the screen and you will see something like "press delete to enter setup" or could be "press F1 or F2" to enter the setup.
When you have determined which key to press. you may be too far into the boot up process for it to work so if the computer boots through to the OS (operating system) start again and reboot the computer.
This time soon as the computer starts to boot, press the "Delete" key or the designated key such as F1 or F2
Sometimes you have to press this key repeatedly for it to work
This will take you through to the setup screen or as its known as the BIOS
when you get to this screen navigate to "advanced" settings and look for "boot up sequence" It is probably set to floppy drive or hard disc drive as first boot up device.
You need to change this to CD ROM drive as your first boot up device.
you can do this by scrolling down to the boot up sequence list where it says which device it is booting from i.e floppy disc. when you have this highlighted, you can change this by pressing the "page down or page up" key and you will see the options change for the first boot device.
when you have the CDROM as your first option press F10 key to exit the setup. and then click on "Y" for yes to save the changes.
have your CD inserted in the CDROM drive and the computer should continue to boot through to the Windows installation screen.
follow the prompts if you want to reinstall the OS. or you may get an option to "repair" the existing installation. Depends what you want to do.

[David L]

Thanks for the replies. I hope I never need to use it.
Yes I will Google it however I have trouble deciphering the jargon, thus the question here.
Thanks John I think I can follow that. I have XP
The idea is to boot from an Acronis bootable CD then reinstall all programs, files etc from backup.
My next purchase needs to be an external hard drive to store it all on.

Thanks again.

[Toolin Around]

I played with Acronis about a year ago. It says it can do differencial backups but I could never get it to do one. Always kept doing a full backup. Can't remember if it has a bootable cd or not. I understand what you're trying to do though. What I did is download the free Bart PE and created a bootable cd with it that had my imaging software on it - in this case Snapshot. I take an image of my HDD to a USB drive so if I have a major data failure I just pop in the cd start snapshot and then re-image off the USB drive - takes about 20 minutes to be back in business. If Acronis has a stand alone .exe part to it you'll be able to add it to the Bart PE disk.