booting to DOS from a usb flash drive

[bovine]

Dear smarty-pantses,

How would one accomplish the feat of booting to dos from a USB flash drive? I need to change my bios but have no floppy drive or blank cds lying about to burn them into boot discs. Also, since I am terrible at following long-winded instructions, it would be preferable if you were to point me to a rar or zip download and said `just unzip this onto your flash drive, fool`and I would gladly do so. Also, if there is an alternative solution to this dilemma please let me know.

[SineSwiper]

I've experimented with it before. You'll have to change some BIOS settings to make it work (Boot on Flash, instead of HD), and it really depends on the BIOS.

If you're too lazy to look it up, then so am I :)

[Tessian]

Ar you looking to FLASH (upgrade) your BIOS this way? If so it really depends on your motherboard manufacturer and what they support/offer. Most motherboards I've had in the past actually now use a windows application to flash the BIOS instead of any kind of boot disk.

[Lox]

Ar you looking to FLASH (upgrade) your BIOS this way? If so it really depends on your motherboard manufacturer and what they support/offer. Most motherboards I've had in the past actually now use a windows application to flash the BIOS instead of any kind of boot disk.

Yeah, even my 4 year old laptop uses a Windows app to flash the BIOS.

[bovine]

my bios must be flashed from either booting to dos or by having a cd or floppy with the new bios file named specifically as the model of the motherboard and must hit alt + f2 while in POST. I guess I just have to go and purchase a blank cd. I lose.

[Tessian]

my bios must be flashed from either booting to dos or by having a cd or floppy with the new bios file named specifically as the model of the motherboard and must hit alt + f2 while in POST. I guess I just have to go and purchase a blank cd. I lose.

That sucks... why do you have to flash it?

[bovine]

did it! yes there was a windows program to do it and I'm a dummy and didn't find it for a zillion million years. Upgraded from a 3.0 ghz processor to a 3.4 ghz dual core and needed a new bios to do so.

[bovine]

vista-nightmare followup...

so if you have had the pleasure of upgrading your windows based operating system to the current version, I have some nightmarish woes to relay to you. I recently threw some new equipment into my computer (extra 2G ram, new processor and video card) and it has crippled the media sharing connectivity to the 360 and ps3. Apparently if you change your mobo or cpu, it kills all the drm from your media files. This drm augmentation apparently makes your computer unable to share media with other computers and consoles. I am not going to endure the pain for throwing any more haruhi episodes onto a flash drive and plugging them into the 360, I am officially going to just reformat and start anew I suppose. If you guys ever run into this problem, the symptoms are that the media center function of the 360-pc connectivity still works, and your 360 and ps3 can still connect to other peoples computers on the network, just not yours. No changes to the firewall, uPNP settings, or anything like that have worked. This simple hardware upgrade has turned into a bit of a pain. I reformatted right before the parts arrived, and now I have to do it all over again. YARG!

rant over.

[Tessian]

That's... odd, but not unexpected I guess? Unfortunately this wasn't a "simple hardware upgrade" as you say; and actually in most cases pre-Vista OS's would have just turned to shit on you after changing the processor anyway.

Maybe you should try the 64bit Vista while you're at it

[bovine]

what is the difference between 32 and 64 bit vista? Well, other than doubled bits.

EDIT

note that I have no idea what the bit doubling might do.

[Imakeholesinu]

what is the difference between 32 and 64 bit vista? Well, other than doubled bits.

EDIT

note that I have no idea what the bit doubling might do.

It has to do with memory space allocations. Also...

http://www.tech-recipes.com/rx/1426/vis ... x64_vs_x86

[Kupek]

It has to do with memory space allocations.

That's a result, but it really means that the processor operates on 64-bit values in a single instruction. 32-bit processors operate on 32-bit values in a single instruction.

The reason this makes a difference for memory allocation is that how much memory you can address is a function of how many states you can represent in a single value. So, 2^32 = 4,294,967,296, aka 4 GB and 2^64 = 1.84467441 × 10^19 which is about 2 million TB. So 64-bit processors don't actually have 64-bit memory address spaces, because 2 million TB is a ridiculous number for our current technolgoy. On the other side, 32-bit processors can address more than 4 GB through address and page table trickery.

[bovine]

I don't understand anything you guys are saying. Pointy up symbol? Memory space?

[Kupek]

Sorry. Long compiles and test runs at work.

[Lox]

I don't understand anything you guys are saying. Pointy up symbol? Memory space?

It's called a carrot, noob!!!!!1111

[SineSwiper]

so if you have had the pleasure of upgrading your windows based operating system to the current version, I have some nightmarish woes to relay to you. I recently threw some new equipment into my computer (extra 2G ram, new processor and video card) and it has crippled the media sharing connectivity to the 360 and ps3. Apparently if you change your mobo or cpu, it kills all the drm from your media files. This drm augmentation apparently makes your computer unable to share media with other computers and consoles. I am not going to endure the pain for throwing any more haruhi episodes onto a flash drive and plugging them into the 360, I am officially going to just reformat and start anew I suppose. If you guys ever run into this problem, the symptoms are that the media center function of the 360-pc connectivity still works, and your 360 and ps3 can still connect to other peoples computers on the network, just not yours. No changes to the firewall, uPNP settings, or anything like that have worked. This simple hardware upgrade has turned into a bit of a pain. I reformatted right before the parts arrived, and now I have to do it all over again. YARG!

Let me get this straight: if you upgrade your PC, the DRM goes mad and decides that all of your previous "legit" DRM files are now not owned by you?

Wow, wow, wow. That's a entirely new dimension of suckage. I guess the lesson learned here is to not buy or download DRM-infected media. At all. Ever.

Doing so is agreeing to only renting a piece of media until you upgrade your PC. It's not even a rental to you personally. It's a rental to your PC. Sorry, your entire music collection is now invalid. Delete it all and start over again.

....Fuck that!

[bovine]

my music doesn't have any DRM, it's just some sort of DRM that is based inside of WMP11 apparently cries foul when you upgrade your mobo or cpu. It them shuts down your ability to share media (and from what I've read, you have to individually play each DRMed song in order for WMP11 to reaquaint itself with the DRM via the internet). My music and everything is fine, just had to throw music, videos, word processor documents, and pictures onto the other harddrive and reformat the windows drive. It was a needless pain, but it could have been worse.... I guess.