mattwray & rudeboyjeff,
"It won't hurt anything to change the order of devices in which the BIOS looks to boot."
"It makes no matter what order."
So are you saying that when I am re-installing Windows and the harddrive is completely wiped that I don't have to go into the BIOS and change the boot sequence to CD (Atapi CD-ROM first) to load setup.exe from the CD.
Is that correct.
Why does my OEM supplier tell me to do that then. If it doesn't matter what order they are in then I shouldn't have to do that - correct???
I just re-started my computer, went into the BIOS and change my boot sequence to be in this order:
HD, CD, FLOPPY
I saved the changes, put in my startup disk and restarted the computer. Now according to both of you, it doesn't matter what order I put these in. So of course I expect the start-up disk to load.
Does it? - NO IT DOESN'T! The computer just ignores the startup disk and continues to load.
Then I changed the order back to the default:
FLOPPY, HD, CD
Saved changes, put in start-up disk and restarted.
What loaded first this time - THE STARTUP DISK - Go figure.
Maybe it has something to do with the order of the boot sequence in the BIOS.
Have I made my point yet. Why change the boot sequence when you don't have to. What happens when you need to use a startup disk? I'll tell you what, you have to change the boot sequence to floopy, save, then restart with the floppy in. Why make things harder for yourself and add extra steps to your process, when you can keep the settings the way they are intended to be so that if need be you can just put in a startup disk and push restart and the disk will load without any extra hassles.
You are giving advice to people on this website saying that it doesn't matter, but I have just proved you wrong. So then the computer illiterate person who saw your post and changed their boot sequence wonders why their startup disk won't work the way it is supposed to when they have a problem and has to figure out how to change the boot sequence or if they remember how to do that then they have to go to that trouble.
BTW - What happens when you get a BIOS virus that denies saving changes to anything (ie- the boot sequence). You have to use a start-up disk to access the computer to get rid of the virus. What happens when your startup disk won't work b/c you have change the boot sequence and you can't change the boot sequence b/c of the virus.
Have a nice day!
PS - I just tested this on both my Dell Dimension 4100 Computers.
NATE