how do I boot from an external cd/dvd drive?

[salty_dog_68]

My Presario F700 has two problems that would be easy to fix separately but together they have killed my laptop. 1st problem - the laptop does not recognize its internal cd/dvd drive. I have updated and then reinstalled the driver. Then reset BIOS defaults but still no disk drive. I don't know if it is an operating system problem or a mother board/bios problem but the drive does not show up in device manager, file explorer, or BIOS. 2nd problem - my vista operating system is corrupted, badly. Windows will not start normally but will start in safe mode. I have done everything up to and including restore. But the laptop always freezes up b4 windows loads. It would be easy to boot from my recovery disk and reload winows but i can't because the dvd drive does not work. So my question is...how do I force the laptop to boot from and external dvd drive(USB). when the laptop starts in safe mode i can see that it recognizes my external dvd drive...but it will not boot from the drive when i put in the restore disk. any suggestions?  

[Vidya]

Shutdown the system. Connect the external CD/DVD drive. Start the system and start tapping <ESC> at HP/Compaq Logo screen, it will start a one time boot menu that will allow you to choose to boot from USB which is your external CD/DVD Drive...

[salty_dog_68]

Any other suggestions? tapping the esc key at start-up did not work. It got me to a BIOS screen that told me about the system components and at the bottom said "hit f10 to go to setup". But nothing about "boot from usb".

[Vidya]

You can even try changing the boot order to first boot from USB...this link has the steps to do so:

http://support.hp.com/us-en/document/c00364979

[salty_dog_68]

okay, i think i am making a little progress. it seems that booting from USB is not an option. I found the BIOS configuration menu and changed the boot order. There were three options with USB as a prefix: usb hard drive, usb disk in key, and usb floppy. i moved all three in front of the notebook hard disk and tried starting-up with different combinations of boot order. no luck. even though i "save and exit" the boot order the laptop always tries to boot from notebook hard disk. when i hit f-9 at start-up it goes into a "change boot order" menu but there are only two chioces: 5.notebook hard drive and 6. network adapter. we know the result of booting from notebook hard drive so I tried booting from network adapter. an INVIDIA boot agent initialization screen pops up and ends with the message...media test failed check cable.

if i had a network adapter and a network there is a chance i could fix it. what is this network adapter and where do i get one??? thanks for your help so far!

[Al_Tan]

why  my HP ENVY 4 wont recognize the harddrive when i try to reinstall windows? any advice?

[pradeep_anpat]

Hi All,

this is Pradeep, my Q is here, can i use the external DVD/CD Drive for HP Sleekbook Pavilion 14 - B004TX? If it's applicable then how can i use of it?? Please help me..........

Rgds,

Pradeep {Personal Information Removed}

[Raxpro]

rked fine that is the answer for it.

[11kevlar]

If your usb external dvd drove doesn't appear in the boot menu, in the boot options, add a delay of 5 seconds. And that's all