MX7515 boot from usb

Hi

I just purchased my new MX7515 laptop and the first thing i want to do is format the HD (5400rpm ). Since i'm a bit behind the times, this thing has no floppy drive to boot from (to run PQMagic etc), how can i get it to boot from the usb drive and what software needs to be on the flash drive for it to boot from (i.e does it just need the same files as on a boot floppy?)

Thanks for your help.

Arim

 

You have to go into the BIOS and set the boot order to either have USB Device or Removeable Media Device, before the local hard drive. This will scan to see if a bootable USB device is present(not sure what terminology is used on that model).

As far as making it bootable, there's a ton of tutorials on google for how to do that, but you just need the bootable system files, like you would on a floppy drive. Frankly...if you're formatting the drive to reload Windows...assuming you're using a relatively recent edition of Windows, the CD will be bootable and there'd be no need to boot from a USB device or floppy for that procedure. You can format, fdisk, anything you'd need from the WinXP(or similar) CD.

 

Good to know that it can all be done from the xp cd.

Thanks for the usb info tho.

Arim