M17x bios question.

Hi there, i had the pleasure of playing with both the 17 and 18 laptops today and to say that i'm impressed is an understatement, this things rock.

I was able to restart both machines at the store to take a look at the bios, and in both cases, in the boot menu i didn't see an option for usb, the only options that i saw were.

hard drive
cd dvd brd
network

i'm a linux user and need to run a linux distro from a usb flash drive. Maybe i missed something, but i will love to know if it's possible to boot from usb on these machines. Thanks in advance.

 

I can only speak about my m15x, my m17xr3 should arrive soon, but it has the usb boot option.
And as much as i doubt m17x/m18x would lack the USB boot option, wouldnt cutting off ~10GB from the hardrive for an ext2 or ext4 partition for a dualboot setup be more convenient?

EDIT: http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-m17x/598444-new-m17x-exiting-intel-pxe-rom.html according to this thread they have ofcourse all standard bootoptions.

 

like i said i booted both machines 2 times and the usb option was not there, but thanks for the reply.

 

Do you remember the BIOS revision?
Maybe they were some prereleased retail demonstration models. Could be an early, unreleased BIOS rev with still some missing options was on them.

 

Not i didn't check the bios revision, but since this was at the fry's store there is a possibility that it had been laying around for a while, i will probably check them next week.

For me that is a not go show.

 

Boot with the USB in the computer and go into the bios and then you should see it in the boot menu. I see my USB drive in my M17X R3.

 

Maybe that is the reason i didn't see them, thanks for the reply, cleansweep. Hopefully somebody else will verify this.