How Can I Boot From External CD/DVD Drive???

[chris301up]

Hi all. I am having quite a bit of difficulty booting from an external CD/DVD drive. I have recently got a 15-DA0008NA laptop but unfortunately it doesn't come with an integral optical drive. When I got this it had Windows 11 installed, but this was painfully slow, so upgraded the RAM to maximum 8gb which has improved this slightly. I wanted to install Windows 10 so purchased an external USB optical drive but no matter what I do it will not boot from this. I attempted to install from a flash drive but that too doesn't work. I have tried all different settings in BIOS but it just won't work and I keep getting a message saying that a driver is missing. I have added a picture (although not the best) which shows the message. Would any of you kind people be able to help please? Thank you.

[BeemerBiker]

You might want to read this analysis by friendly AI that is beginning to take over our world.

Since your laptop is basically a win10 system you might be able to obtain the original win10 OS and all the required drivers. Read about the cloud recovery and the tools such as the push button reset

https://support.hp.com/us-en/drivers/hp-15-da0000-laptop-pc/model/24929909?sku=4AQ27EAR

You might be better off with tiny windows 11
The official and complete tiny10 and tiny11 list – NTDEV

[chris301up]

Thank you so much for your reply. I tried to obtain the original Win 10  operating system plus drivers but getting nowhere. I will have a look at Win 11 tiny and see if that will work as an alternative. I'd not heard of that so thanks for the info. What I managed to do was remove the hard drive from the laptop and, with the aid of an adaptor, install it into my desktop PC and install Windows 10 from there. I then swapped it all back and managed to get it up and running.  I would've thought I would at least be able to set up a flash drive should the CD/DVD not work? But no chance. Thanks again

[chris301up]

I've almost given up with this now and ready to throw it away. No matter what I try nothing works. I have one last thought which maybe that an integral optical drive could be fitted to this? Looking at the motherboard there is connections already fitted which give the impression this could be done? If not I think I'll just take it to the tip and be done with it. 

[chris301up]

Right everyone. I think I’ve found a walk around as a solution to this problem? I have a older HP laptop fitted with an integral optical drive so removed the hard drive from this laptop and inserted into the older model. From here I was able to use the factory restore disks which not only installed Windows 10 but also a restore partition with factory restore software for future use in the event of problems. The pre installed drivers are obviously slightly different for each model but they update without issue during installation. I have done a factory restore using the created restore software on two occasions and it appears to work reasonably well. At least I don’t have to concern myself with not being able to boot from a flash drive and have back up software for future use. Why does everything have to be so complicated?