I just bought a new machine from Walmart.com. This is the $498 one made by Balance Digital Technology. It came with LinSpire 4.5 loaded and I want to put on the new 5.0. I managed to download the iso file using my regular Window's XP desktop (no easy task) and I burned the CD. But the new laptop won't boot from it. I saw a help page on Linspires site that says I have to edit the BIOS to get it to boot from the CD, but they say that getting to the BIOS is machine specific and they don't give many clues after that. When I boot I'm given 3 choices (Linspire, Redirect & Diagnostics)

None of these lead me to editing the BIOS

Help

Jeff

Look at the messages on the screen before the bootloader appears. You should see something line "Press (some key) to enter setup."
Pressing this key at this point should get you into the BIOS.

Hey,

Thanks for the help.

There is nothing like that prompt. When I use the 3rd choice, which is Diagnostics, I end up at a prompt. From there, among the 1471 choices they list, is one called biosdecode. That just shows me some settings (none of which seem to have to do with the boot path) but I can't see how to edit it.

If you get to the list of operating systems, you're too far in to be able to access the BIOS. Did you get much documentation with the laptop, it might be able to tell you more. Alternatively, Try Google'ing for (laptop model) BIOS or something like that. Beyond that, I can't really help, because getting to your BIOS really is machine specific.

Although having said that, the key you need is often one of the one of the function keys, or delete.

It came with very little and it takes 6 minutes to boot, so each fKey guess is going to cost me. Google and even the manufacturer's website got me nowhere...

But thank''s for trying..

Actuall this helped. Just letting me know that I had to hold down the keys even before any screen came up at all, got me to the bios editor.

THANKS :-)

Jeff

No problem. Just remember to be very careful while editing your BIOS. In general, if you don't know what an option does - leave it alone!