Harddrives renaming themselves?

[entropyfoe]

To Eadwine Rose,

No insult intended. I am sorry to come off that way.

I wrote "Obviously...." to power off, so I think I realize that you and probably most on this list know this.

But as an engineer, I know sometimes a reminder for those obvious things prevents accidents.

Sorry, and best of luck to solve your boot issues. The old PATA days were certainly more complex.

-Jay

[lucky9]

You can boot a LiveCD/DVD from that F8 boot menu, no matter what boot order is in the BIOS.

As for updating the BIOS....those 'system stability' issues are usually extremely helpful. And I wouldn't use system stability to describe them. Manufacturer's do so because they don't want to admit to mistakes (in most cases anyway).

[Eadwine Rose]

Yeah I have set it like this now (hdd first) and will use the F8 option.

As far as bios: ten foot pole thing

[lucky9]

No problem. After some of the horror stories I've read I can understand some of the worry.

If you ever do have to update a BIOS do so when there's little possibility of the electricity going off. Or use a UPS. Print out instructions if using Linux/Unix. If you use Windows they usually have you covered with specialized software. The big thing is having the electricity stay on. (Plus letting things run until they are finished.)

But if it's not broke......

[richb]

I Have updated bios several times with success, but once, back in the old days, my floppy failed in the middle. The result was a motherboard that had to be replaced. So I understand the reluctance.

[Eadwine Rose]

F8 works like a peach, nice thing!

I had seen it before in the boot messages, but it wasn't clear to me what it did.



Power going off? Uhm.. last time that happened.. never in this house, lived here for 8 years now

But if it's not broke...... don't fix it indeed!

Hopefully that boot issue will be sorted now, I'd much rather solve it this way than having to open everything up and changing jumpers. Not that I mind doing that, but it involves having to bother people to help me (or rather, my hands) out.

[Gaer Boy]

F8 works like a peach, nice thing!

I had seen it before in the boot messages, but it wasn't clear to me what it did.

There's a key for this on all BIOSs - F8 is what Asus use, my netbook is F10. It's the easiest way to boot from any kind of removable media.

[Eadwine Rose]

Yeah.. ALL options were there.. both dvd drives, the hard drive, the external usb, even the card reader hahaha

I was just too scared to tap that F8 in the past. As I didn't know what it did, I didn't want to inadvertently break things, so.. steered clear.

[chrispop99]

I Have updated bios several times with success, but once, back in the old days, my floppy failed in the middle. The result was a motherboard that had to be replaced. So I understand the reluctance.

Many modern motherboards have a second backup BIOS chip that will become the default if the original can't be read.

Chris

[richb]

I Have updated bios several times with success, but once, back in the old days, my floppy failed in the middle. The result was a motherboard that had to be replaced. So I understand the reluctance.

Many modern motherboards have a second backup BIOS chip that will become the default if the original can't be read.

Chris

I would be careful relying on that, as low cost machines probably do not have a backup. I doubt my laptop does. Having said that I only had that problem once many moons ago, (about 15 to 20 years) .