The Whole Microsoft Bios Thing...

[rainless]

So I casually skipped both Windows 8 and 10. Figured I had better things to do like editing movies and making music.

Low and behold I had to recover somebody's password... and there was no setting in the bios to automatically boot from whatever USB device is plugged in. Like it wasn't even an option. I thought "Well that's ODD... Remind me to never buy another Asus motherboard again..."

You could still boot from a USB stick... if the USB stick were plugged in and bootable... via the boot menu... but there was no option to DEFAULT to USB.

Secondly I had to repair someone's laptop. Partition... formatting... reinstalling Windows and all the drivers... the whole thing. Imagine my surprise when I discovered the product key wasn't on the bottom anymore! Now it's in the bios? When the hell did THAT happen?

But whatever... I'm more concerned about the USB thing. Why would they remove the option to default to a USB thumb drive? Is that just an Asus thing? Are ALL Asus motherboards doing that now? Or just the cheap ones? Is Gigabyte doing the same thing? Is it just an Intel thing? Or do AMD motherboards do the same thing?

The product key bios thing I'm actually fine with... for laptops at least. I'm assuming if they had to swap out your motherboard during a repair the new board would just (hopefully) come with a new product key... or they would transfer it somehow.

 

[EarthDog]

I don't recall there ever being an option to default to a thumb drive....I recall always having to select the boot device... If its the only device that is bootable, it will default there...

 

[rainless]

I don't recall there ever being an option to default to a thumb drive....I recall always having to select the boot device... If its the only device that is bootable, it will default there...

How can you "not recall" being able to default to the Thumb drive? It's been a feature on every motherboard since at LEAST the mid nineties!

You at least since 96 as far as I can remember, when you went into Boot order, you could always select USB as one of the options. Now it's just not there anymore.

 

[Alaric]

Don't have that option on the last 5 Asus boards' BIOS I've been in (two BIOS each for three of them). Or two Gigabyte boards and one ECS or Dell notebook. All had the option to boot from USB, but I thought Windows didn't boot from USB through W7?

 

[EarthDog]

How can you "not recall" being able to default to the Thumb drive? It's been a feature on every motherboard since at LEAST the mid nineties!

You at least since 96 as far as I can remember, when you went into Boot order, you could always select USB as one of the options. Now it's just not there anymore.

I don't know. I don't recall my system, every time I plugged in a bootable USB stick, boot from the USB stick. Maybe it happened. Either way, I prefer it this way as how often are most people (perhaps enthusiasts a bit more) using USBs as bootable devices?

 

[rainless]

I don't know. I don't recall my system, every time I plugged in a bootable USB stick, boot from the USB stick. Maybe it happened. Either way, I prefer it this way as how often are most people (perhaps enthusiasts a bit more) using USBs as bootable devices?

We're on an OVERCLOCKERS SITE!

I boot to USB, literally, all the time. Especially when i'm repairing a hard drive or running an alternative OS, or setting up a RAID array, or handling partitions for alternative O.S.es.

None of these are foreign concepts...

It appears my current motherboard is UEFI... it's just operating in "Legacy Mode"... which was probably the only way my hard drives would boot. (It's probably the only reason why I have the option to boot from USB in the bios.)

It must've been in Legacy mode when I got it. I never even noticed. It was only this week that I became aware that UEFI existed...

 

[EarthDog]

That's a good point. All my OSs are on there and trouble shooting utilities which some are bootable environments. Still, I always recall changing it.

 

[habbajabba]

I have yet to find the need for UEFI boot mode, especially since I use a rescue bootable usb device for when things won't boot. I keep my windows 7 tablet in legacy mode for this very reason. The manufacturer advises windows backup but either their instructs don't work or windows backup, I'm not sure. The only odd thing is it does not like any usb device other than a bootable one plugged in or it will bluescreen. I think my win7 desktop is uefi mode for sure though. I keep a boot rescue usb plugged in at all times and simply hide it from the day to day os.

 

[trents]

AFAIK, the ability to boot into the Windows desktop from a USB began with Windows 8. I'm not talking about installing Windows from a USB I'm talking about actually running the machine from a USB.

Most motherboards these days allow you to set the boot device order in bios and also have a hot key that if pressed during boot up will give you an on the fly boot device menu. The exact key used for the hotkey will vary from motherboard to motherboard and on OEM computers (especially laptops) it may not be easy to find and it may also be necessary to use the Fn key in conjunction with the F_ key hot key and, in addition to that there may be a proprietary "tap" pattern (or even "press and hold") for using the hot keys.

And it is probably true that a lot of computers will default to the USB or optical if they are bootable. But not all of them will do that by default and never did. Aftermarket motherboards tend to use many of the same conventions from manufacturer to manufacturer (certainly there are exceptions) but OEM motherboard manufacturers are all over the place.

I have worked on customers' newer laptops lately that I could not find the boot menu hot key and "googling" it did not reveal the secret. So there may not even be a boot menu hotkey on some recently manufactured laptops. The only way I was able to boot from a USB or optical was to change the boot order in bios. I think this may be a security trend and connected to secure boot technology. The OEM manufacturers don't want you to put alternate operating systems on the machine.

 

[UltraTaco]

On mine, you can press F8 and pick the device to boot from. Asus board.