[SOLVED] Booting from USB without BIOS access

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ninja883

Commendable
May 17, 2018
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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.
 
Solution
You can install windows directly from HDD also. It just needs to be prepared appropriately.

Colif

Win 11 Master
Moderator
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.
 
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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

Win 11 Master
Moderator
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 install windows directly from HDD also. It just needs to be prepared appropriately.

 
Solution

ninja883

Commendable
May 17, 2018
35
0
1,530
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

Commendable
May 17, 2018
35
0
1,530
You can install windows directly from HDD also. It just needs to be prepared appropriately.

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.
 
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