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Sabelo Nkosi Posted on Jan 10, 2012

How to boot from an external cd rom on a dell optiplex sx260 because it does not have an option to boot from an external cd rom..

  • 2 more comments 
  • Sabelo Nkosi
    Sabelo Nkosi Jan 11, 2012

    No that's not the case because I've tried 3 different external CD/DVD roms and none of them can be detected on Bios. And the machine does not have an OS yet, that's why I want to do a fresh installation of windows.

  • Anonymous Jan 11, 2012

    This may not be solution but might help. In my bios screen I have a Advanced Tab, I have a USB configuration listed. Highlight using arrow keys and press enter. There I have three things, Legacy USB (enabled), USB 2.0 (enabled), and USB Zip (HARD DISK) specified, highlight any of those to change to enabled if not so listed. In Boot Tab I see: Boot Device Priority, Hard Disk device, Removable drives, Atapi CD roms (among other stuff). I think if you boot with windows disk in the USB external cd rom, that the bios might show the drive in either removable drives or Atapi CD roms sub areas. If recognizes CD disk there in the drive, then it may show also in Boot Priority. Don't think it would show up without a disk in it. Presume you are using XP cd and that would be a bootable cd. I have loaded Puppy LInux on a USB flash drive on my machine setup the way it is and found it a great system that runs flash video great and firefox 4.0 which you might consider. You can get those on ebay or download to another computer following instructions etc. Hope that helps.

  • Anonymous Jan 11, 2012

    Thinking if you set the USB zip to "attapi cd rom" that would be better than set to hard disk. In the old windows machines we didn't have all these options but ran usb from windows only or dos maybe, still learning myself.

  • Sabelo Nkosi
    Sabelo Nkosi Jan 13, 2012

    Hi there

    When you mentioned flash drives it clicked on my mind and immediately searched for a software that can make a bootable flash drive and I booted off it and its seem to be working OK. The machine can boot from a flash drive, and I'm busy right now installing windows xp on it.
    Thanks a million my friend you've made my day in this new year hope you have a good and fruitful year.
    I'll also give you detailed info on my progress with my optiplex sx260.

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  • Contributor 32 Answers
  • Posted on Jan 10, 2012
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Joined: Dec 29, 2010
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Maybe it's not installed into windows, or whatever system, with a "driver." That is a program you can get off the internet that tells your computer how to operate that device.

Once installed, a restart and going into bios setup, you should find it in boot priority under the boot tab. If installed it should be there and you set it to top priority and save with f10 and exit. It will reboot and look first in the cd rom for an operating system.

Testimonial: "I've downloaded a software called flashboot and created a bootable xp flash drive. Here's a link that also contains all the details on how its done... http://prime-expert.com/flashboot/"

5 Related Answers

Jalal Sordo

  • 1800 Answers
  • Posted on Jan 27, 2009

SOURCE: i can't boot from external usb dvd/cd drive

please try to remove the connection between motherboard and vd/dvd drive.

then perform the previous steps.

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Anonymous

  • 903 Answers
  • Posted on Nov 17, 2008

SOURCE: BIOS failure ??? DEll Systems OptiPlex GX270 Series

this may or may not help, try taking out the cmos battery out (looks like a watch battery) and leave for a few minutes then replace, this will reset the bios.

Anonymous

  • 315 Answers
  • Posted on Apr 29, 2009

SOURCE: need to know to remove side pannel optiplex sx260

Here you go:
http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/opsx260/en/ug/cvrop.htm#1136140

For other options :
http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/opsx260/en/ug/index.htm

Anonymous

  • 1 Answer
  • Posted on Jun 14, 2009

SOURCE: cant install xp to dell c400 with external cd-rom

This is how I did it, you may or may not have the ability. A basic knowledge of Dos is necessary 1) I used another laptop but you could use an adapter to use the hard drive in a regular computer. 2)boot with a windows 98 boot disk, fdisk it to a fat32 partition, make the hard drive a system boot disk (format /s c:) 3) copy the i386 folder and all its contents from a full or full oem (not branded) disk to the laptop drive, also copy smartdrv and highmem.sys from the floppy (speeds thing up dramatically) and create a config.sys file with device=highmem.sys 4)physically install the hard drive back into the C400, boot to dos run smartdrv.exe, then go to the i386 folder and type winnt.exe (enter) wooo should work. MusslaChooda Pakichooda Nathuram Godse

Anonymous

  • 23 Answers
  • Posted on Jul 09, 2009

SOURCE: Dell Optiplex GX50 won't load windows OS

Which cdrom is it? Is it a windows XP cd? This is an older PC? Does it have a floppy disk drive? Try downloading from Barts a bootable floppy disk, set boot order to floppy in BIOS, change to cdrom drive letter after booting to floppy (D:?)
got to I386 folder and set up from there.
More info would be helpful.

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If you want to boot from a external cd/dvd rom here's what to do.
  1. Connect your USB CD/DVD ROM to your computer.
  2. After connecting, you must start from boot up. so Reboot your computer.
  3. You must go to your bios settings, so during boot, press DELETE or if it doesn't work reboot again and try F2.
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