bios boot device priority

[sandwedger]

I screwed up and forgot what my original boot device priorities were in my HP Pavilion. Is there a suggested preferred sequence?

 

[NoCalAdmin]

C: (harddisk)
CD ROM
A:

 

[franklin97355]

For a home computer I set it floppy, CDROM, hard drive

The answer is "42"

 

[NoCalAdmin]

differnt theories. Why wait for the A: and CD to time out. Hit the hard drive first. If the machine can't find it, then your CD and A can take over.
Frankly, it doesn't really matter.

 

[kmcferrin]

Depends on if you boot from CD on occasion (Ubuntu or Knoppix users) or are frequently installing multi-boot operating systems.

I usually go with CD-ROM, then hard disk. I haven't had a floppy drive for years anyway. On the "waiting for the CD to time out" issue, a CD-ROM is smarter than a floppy drive. The floppy disk only knows if there is a disk present by trying to spin it up and read it. The CD-ROM can tell if there is a disc present without having to spin up the drive, so the "time out" interval is much slower than you would think. Plus, most people that I know only reboot their PCs once every couple of weeks so any delay would be largely irrelevant.

 

[Drewsoftware]

Kmcferrin is correct: the boot priority depends on your personal needs. If you hardly ever boot from other devices, boot right from the hard drive; saves some time. If you sometimes boot from floppy or CD, set those as priority depending on which you boot from. As Kmc pointed out, the biggest lagger is a floppy drive, so unless you're in the habit of floppy booting I'd take it out of the loop. You can always change the boot priority if needed, so it's not a biggie. Most folks just boot directly from the hard drive and then change the setup if later necessary to boot from CD or floppy.



---***--- Drew Software offers highly accurate Personality
Evaluation software. Reduce turnover. Improve job satisfaction.

http://Drewsoftware.com