Question Booting from usb device on an old laptop ?

[PaulosK]

I found an old laptop (vaio vgn-fs215b) and I wan to change the windows xp with arch. I can find the boot menu button, but it doesn't show me my usb. Did old laptops not support booting from usb, or am I doing something wrong?.
(the usb isn't shown on the bios either, but windows recognise it)

 

[TerryLaze]

Get into the bios itself they usually have two lists one for the boot order, cd hard drive floppy and so on, and a second list where you select the order for each, so if you have two hard drives you have to change the order of them in the second list for it to start from the other hard drive, a usb stick should show up as a hard drive.

If the bios doesn't have anything like that then,
get plop boot manager unzip it and inside the windows folder run the install to boot menu bat file.
It will install a boot loader that allows booting from usb, but be warned it is much slower than normal usb.

That laptop seems to have a cd/dvd drive, if at all possible I would use that to install anything.

 

[PaulosK]

Get into the bios itself they usually have two lists one for the boot order, cd hard drive floppy and so on, and a second list where you select the order for each, so if you have two hard drives you have to change the order of them in the second list for it to start from the other hard drive, a usb stick should show up as a hard drive.

If the bios doesn't have anything like that then,
get plop boot manager unzip it and inside the windows folder run the install to boot menu bat file.
It will install a boot loader that allows booting from usb, but be warned it is much slower than normal usb.

That laptop seems to have a cd/dvd drive, if at all possible I would use that to install anything.

it doesn't have the boot order list, I checked for that. I will try the second method later.
The laptop has a dvd drive and allows booting from the dvd, but i have no idea how to burn an iso to a dvd and if I need more tools than just a dvd and the laptop's disk drive. In other words, I am too young to have ever use one.

 

[TerryLaze]

it doesn't have the boot order list, I checked for that. I will try the second method later.
The laptop has a dvd drive and allows booting from the dvd, but i have no idea how to burn an iso to a dvd and if I need more tools than just a dvd and the laptop's disk drive. In other words, I am too young to have ever use one.

Windows itself will do it, but I prefer using imgburn, it's free and much better.
I think if you run the media creation tool and choose dvd it will automatically burn it to a dvd.

Beginner Geek: How to Burn an ISO Image to a Disc

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