No native BIOS support

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[edit] Generic Method

There is a third party bootmanger called PLoP Boot Manager. It offers some support for booting CD-ROM and USB even with no native BIOS support.

  • PLoP Boot Manager can be installed either on floppy, hard disk, CD or USB.

It's free in price but I can't find anything on their site about licensing and source code. It's still an interesting project.

[edit] CD-ROM / DVD-ROM

If your motherboard's BIOS does not support booting a "no-emulation mode" El Torito boot image on a CD-ROM, you can try using the "Generic Method" above, or you can try using the Smart Boot Manager, which has driving code for ATAPI CD-ROMs.

Previous versions of Microsoft Windows did offer bootdisks (boot from bootdisk with CD driver, then change device and run setup).

However, some Linux distros offer boot floppy to CD boot.

[edit] USB

If your motherboard's BIOS does not support booting a USB mass storage device in its boot order or boot selection menu, you can try using the "Generic Method" above.

Additionally, some Linux distributions offer a means to boot from USB. They can fit on a floppy or a CD/DVD. Typically, these are very small Linux environments which include USB drivers and which use kexec to chain-load a new environment from your USB mass storage device (or even elsewhere). Some links:

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