If you frequently have drives connected to your system that will automatically install an OS on boot, then I suggest that you are an advanced user representing less than 1% of users. In this case, you should know that you have an edge-case and should change your boot priorities. However, for the 99%+ of users, an external-first boot order allows them to rely on boot drives that others may instruct them to use without having to know what the BIOS is, how to access the BIOS, what boot order is, or how to modify the boot order. Considering that my beef is that systems do not have anything close to a consistent way to access the BIOS, this makes providing instructions to people very difficult because now you also need to know how to help them get access to their BIOS.

Needing to boot an external device is not unusual. It is the primary method of recovery when your installed OS is messed up. It is difficult enough for non-technical users to figure out how to fix a damaged OS, why make it even more difficult by making them jump the boot order hurdle?

You say that I didn’t know what I was doing. If this is true, then a person with more than 8 years (at the time of writing) of professional experience in code development, server administration, system building, network management, etc had no idea what he was doing when trying to simply fix a broken Windows install. If a system is set up in such a way that it requires more experience than that to simply fix Windows, and you find such technical requirements as reasonable, then I fear for the people that have to work with you or with the solutions you produce as you clearly have an elitist attitude when it comes to designing interfaces.

“[Pressing] F10 while booting” would not have forced a recovery partition to boot. If you read my post, I indicated that the recovery partition was also damaged. So, nice try, but no.

You say that you don’t want to insult anyone but suggest that anyone that can’t figure out this problem is too stupid to eat with anything other than a spoon without killing themselves. Nicely done.

Come to find out, the primary boot option was the harddrive, which, frankly, is the worst boot option to be set as the primary boot method since there’s no way to bypass the hard disk boot without modifying the BIOS.

Can not agree with this. (actually it is stupid suggestion to boot external devices at first). Not mentioning that it is the fastest way to set first HDD in a boot order because it saves from 3 seconds (while there is no CD or USB device) up to hour for recovering messed OS if suddenly a flash drive with OS distributive will be connected. Computer will start search all files if flash drive is bootable etc.

If you need to set smth else in boot order then you are going to do smth not usual. If you are going to do smth unusual then you at least should know what to do while setting proper boot order is the simplest.

Basing on all above you HAD NO IDEA what to do and how to do.
Next time try to press F10 while booting so it will force recovery partition to boot.

P.S. Taking your words seriously would mean that sellers can’t sell folks otherwise some people would kill themselves because they have no knowledge to (stupid enough that can) eat only using spoons.

Did not want to insult anyone but had to use these words to put back someone to a realistic life.

I’ve configured the BIOS every which way possible to make sure that it boots from the CD/DVD first. It never happens. Linux/ubuntu boots fine from my flashdrive, but I cannot for the life of me get my Windows Vista 32 DVD to boot for a reinstall/repair.

I know the DVD works because it has no issue loading on my other laptop, both from inside XP or from the boot menu in the startup beginning. I know this thread is long dead, but just hoping someone might stumble across it again and offer some advice. I’m close to just completely reformatting the drive and trying to reinstall that way, but I want to see if there’s anyway to repair it first by using my Vista DVD.

Thanks

JD

If you’ve confirmed that your optical drive is listed as a higher priority than your hard drive, then I would suspect that the system doesn’t recognize your disk as bootable.