Boot from USB on old computers

So you have an old computer that does not allow you to boot from USB drive? No problem In this post we will tell you how you can do that without modifying the BIOS.

Things you’ll need:

• A blank CD
• Your favorite burner program that can burn .iso images (We’ll use CDBurnerXP)
• PLoP Boot Manager (The file will be downloaded if you’ll click on it)
• Bootable USB drive (It depends on you that you really need or not)

Burning .iso image to CD

After installing CDBurnerXP, run it.
Enter the blank CD in your CD Rom.
Select the option Burn ISO image and
click on Ok.

Next step is to select the iso image. You will get  that iso file after extracting the zip (plop boot manager, downloading link given above). That iso file will be named as plpbt.iso. Click on browse and choose
the plpbt.iso. You will see some options there like shown in the image, I’ll suggest you to leave them as they are but you can check/uncheck them according to your needs. Then click on Burn Disc. It will start burning plop boot manager on the CD. The process will not take too much time.

Making a USB drive bootable

You can skip this section if you already have a bootable USB drive or you know how to create one.

Setting BIOS to boot from CD

Once you’ve completed the steps given above, It’s the time to check whether your BIOS is set to boot from CD or not. If you’re sure that It will boot from CD then you can skip this step. I will recommend you to check again to make sure the CD option is selected. All computer’s setup interface will vary from each other but the process of checking and changing booting option will probably be the same.

First restart your computer and go into the setup menu. Your computer might have different key to enter in setup from mine. The most common keys to enter in the setup are F2, F12 and Delete

When you’ll restart your computer, you’ll see your manufacturer logo. The key to enter in the setup and boot menu will also displayed there.

The images of computer’s setup are taken roughly

Enter in your computer’s setup and try to look for Boot menu. In my this computer I can see something written as Boot Sequence. You might not have the same written there, you might see Boot menu in a tab.

 Use the up, down, left and right arrow keys to got up, down, left and right. To enter in anything you can press Enter key. To exit press Escape.

Come to the boot sequence and press enter key.

A box will open and will show you some default BIOS options from booting in. From here you can see from which devices you can boot in. As you can see there is no USB option that’s why I have to use PLoP boot manager in order to boot from USB. You have to make sure the CD-ROM device is on number 1. You can change the sequence by Left/Right arrow keys depending upon your computer.

Once you set the CD-ROM device on the number 1, press Enter. Now save changes, You can try to exit and it will ask you automatically that you want to save the settings.

Select Save changes and Exit and press enter and it will enter in the windows.

Using PLoP Boot Manager

Now everything is done. You have PLoP boot manager burned in a CD. You have a bootable USB drive. You also have set CD-ROM on number 1 in Boot sequence. Now just restart your computer and this time enter in the Boot menu. You’ll see a beautiful background like space with stars and a box at the top left of the screen. There you will find a option USB along with other options. Just select USB by arrow keys and press Enter and bingo! You are now booting from USB in your old computer which even don’t support USB booting.

Posted in: Tech Tricks