How to boot Dell Inspiron 5150 using an external USB DVD drive

wdli · 11-07-2009, 03:03 PM

hi everyone,

i have a dell inspiron 5150 laptop that i 'd like to install Ubuntu 9.04. But the internal dvd drive is broken. So i bought a Samsum external USB dvd drive and plan to use it to install Ubuntu with a live cd.

i changed (by pressing F2) the BIOS to make sure "Usb storage device" was used in booting. but this never worked. each time the booting process ignored this and went straight to the hdd to boot window xp.

kind of frustrated. the even more strange is the boot options doesn't show USB Storage device (by pressing F12) at all. the options didn't seem to be affected by the BIOS changes.

any idea how to proceed?

thanks.

david

linus72 · 11-07-2009, 04:17 PM

I use Plop bootmanager's executable to boot all my usb stuff
it can boot usb, usb-cdrom,etc even on PC's that wont boot usb,etc
http://www.plop.at/en/bootmanager.html

I use this executable
named plpbt<link
it doesn't install or anything
you just put it on cd, usb, hd, etc
and setup menu to boot it

example grub menu.lst for plop

Code:

title Plop
root (hdx,x)
kernel /boot/plpbt

example isolinux/syslinux.cfg entry

Code:

label plop
menu label Plop Bootmanager
kernel /boot/plpbt

I have it on most of my newer stuff
http://multidistro.com/downloads/newstuff/newstuff.html

michaelk · 11-07-2009, 08:13 PM

Is this a known working bootable CD?

wdli · 11-07-2009, 10:20 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by michaelk

Is this a known working bootable CD?

Yes, I used many times.

repo · 11-08-2009, 05:28 AM

I have the same problem on my asus laptop, it only boots from usb if I remove the HD
Don't know why though, the usb boots on other computers OK

wdli · 11-08-2009, 09:21 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by repo

I have the same problem on my asus laptop, it only boots from usb if I remove the HD
Don't know why though, the usb boots on other computers OK

Hi,

If you could boot without harddrive then how did you install after boot? Did you reinstall the harddrive while you were in Linux mode?

repo · 11-08-2009, 11:08 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by wdli

Hi,

If you could boot without harddrive then how did you install after boot? Did you reinstall the harddrive while you were in Linux mode?

Never tried to install, just know I need to remove the HD in order to boot from USB.
It has a CD