[SOLVED] Booting from USB without BIOS access

[ninja883]

Hi
I am running Windows 10 Pro on my laptop which only has an HDD. Recently, I bought an SSD and was trying to reinstall Windows into it when I realised that I had forgotten the password to my BIOS so that I cannot boot from the USB stick that I'm using. I know that I can just run the setup.exe file after booting into the OS that I already have on my machine but that's just going to reinstall it in the same drive. As far as I know, the only way to install into a different partition is by booting from the USB stick which cannot be accomplished without BIOS access.
By the way, I use an Acer Aspire 5 A515-51G-50UW and my BIOS is Insyde corp V2.02. I haven't able to access the boot menu without going into the BIOS like I remember having done in my older desktop PC.
Thanks in advance.

 

[borris618]

You should be able to access the boot menu with any of the 'F' keys, most have it on F9 if i'm remembering correcty..

 

[Colif]

You can get win 10 to boot off USB from within windows.
Go to settings/update & security/recovery
under advanced startup, click restart now
on this menu there is an option called Use a device. If you put USB in before you reach this screen, you may be able to boot from it.

this isn't the ideal way to reinstall as win 10 will see the old hdd and unless you wipe it, will use the boot partition that already exists on it for the one that you really want on the ssd.

I can't help you any other way, especially with regard to a "forgotten" bios password.

 

[TerryLaze]

this isn't the ideal way to reinstall as win 10 will see the old hdd and unless you wipe it, will use the boot partition that already exists on it for the one that you really want on the ssd.

I can't help you any other way, especially with regard to a "forgotten" bios password.

It will use the HDD to boot anyway since he won't be able to change the bios settings,if he completely wipes the HDD he might find himself with a non bootable system.

 

[Colif]

Yes, true. unless he can remember his bios password the boot order would remain the same.

I would contact Acer and ask them for advice. if you can prove to them it is your laptop they might have a way to fix bios password.

 

[ninja883]

You should be able to access the boot menu with any of the 'F' keys, most have it on F9 if i'm remembering correcty..

That doesn't work.

 

[SkyNetRising]

You can install windows directly from HDD also. It just needs to be prepared appropriately.

Clean Install Windows Directly from the Hard Disk Drive - Microsoft Windows Mini-Guides

Clean Install Windows Directly from the Hard Disk Drive - posted in Microsoft Windows Mini-Guides: Clean Install Windows Directly from the Hard Disk Drive You want to install Windows but you can’t use a DVD or an USB for whatever reason? This tutorial will show you a method that will allow you...

www.bleepingcomputer.com

 

[ninja883]

Yes, true. unless he can remember his bios password the boot order would remain the same.

I would contact Acer and ask them for advice. if you can prove to them it is your laptop they might have a way to fix bios password.

You can get win 10 to boot off USB from within windows.
Go to settings/update & security/recovery
under advanced startup, click restart now
on this menu there is an option called Use a device. If you put USB in before you reach this screen, you may be able to boot from it.

this isn't the ideal way to reinstall as win 10 will see the old hdd and unless you wipe it, will use the boot partition that already exists on it for the one that you really want on the ssd.

I can't help you any other way, especially with regard to a "forgotten" bios password.

The restart would've worked but it turns out that secure boot has been enabled and I've tried disabling by going into Troubleshoot > Advanced Options > UEFI Firmware Settings but nothing's listed there except "restart" which is obviously pointless.

 

[ninja883]

You can install windows directly from HDD also. It just needs to be prepared appropriately.

Clean Install Windows Directly from the Hard Disk Drive - Microsoft Windows Mini-Guides

Clean Install Windows Directly from the Hard Disk Drive - posted in Microsoft Windows Mini-Guides: Clean Install Windows Directly from the Hard Disk Drive You want to install Windows but you can’t use a DVD or an USB for whatever reason? This tutorial will show you a method that will allow you...

www.bleepingcomputer.com

It certainly seems plausible but I'm just running into more and more issues that I think it's far less hassle to contact Acer and obtain BIOS access. Speaking of issues, I was trying to mark my newly formed partition as "active" when I encountered the message that the disk was not a "fixed MBR disk". Conversion to MBR was received by another message that said that the command was inapplicable as the disk contained a pagefile volume. I know I can move pagefile.sys but I don't think this is the last of the issues to come and sending it in seems like a good idea at this stage.

 

[TerryLaze]

It certainly seems plausible but I'm just running into more and more issues that I think it's far less hassle to contact Acer and obtain BIOS access.

They are going to charge you a horrendous amount for something that you can do with free software available on the net,forum rules just don't allow us to tell you which software.

 

[ninja883]

They are going to charge you a horrendous amount for something that you can do with free software available on the net,forum rules just don't allow us to tell you which software.

I'm sure there's some place where you can tell me that 😉

 

[SkyNetRising]

I was trying to mark my newly formed partition as "active" when I encountered the message that the disk was not a "fixed MBR disk". Conversion to MBR was received by another message that said that the command was inapplicable as the disk contained a pagefile volume.

You'd need to connect the drive as secondary to a desktop pc to perform necessary preparations.