Hi guys, would be most grateful for help with this. I picked up an emachine, EM350, for my daughter. Seems in excellent conditon etc, but, there is no op sys on there. As this has no CD rom, then, I'm hoping to add my win xp using a usb pen. One problem. I need to set the boot order to see the USB first. Unfortunately, I am unable to do this. Going into BIOS, I can see the options I have, and the USB pen is viewable in the options, but, for some reason, I am unable to select any of the options. Seems that for some reason, the boot order can not be changed. There is also other stuff in the BIOS that I am unable to change. Any ideas?
Common keys for boot menu, BIOS and/or recovery are F1,F2 F9-F12 or Delete. It should list which is for what on your specific computer as it boots. Boot Menu is usually F9 or F10. After inserting the USB stick press F9 or F10 to see the boot menu and select from there. It's not necessary to set it in BIOS.
Thanks, but I cannot get into a boot select menu at all. I can get into the safe mode menu, but none of those have the option to choose boot order. I should say that, there does seem to be an old version of XP residing in the machine, but I get no further than the message "Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt /windows/system32/config/system So, another idea may be for me to somehow get this file on the machine, but how??
? I know how to get into Bios, The issue is that the option to change the boot order is not workable. ie - I can see all the available boot options, but am unable to change them. There are other bits in the Bios that I cannot change either, so, basically, for some reason some of the Bios is inaccesible.