installing vista on a computer with no OS

It was, as the OP stated for his, a new hard drive. Whether it was 'naked'
I will leave up to peeping Seths. With that BIOS I had to put the DVD
player first to avoid the message. Enough said.

"Seth" <> wrote in message
news:3HOKi.943$...
> "John Barnes" <> wrote in message
> news:...
>>
>> "Seth" <> wrote in message
>> news:9NMKi.8$...
>>> "John Barnes" <> wrote in message
>>> news:%...
>>>> Sorry, but you do not put the virgin hard drive first when trying to
>>>> install from the DVD drive, UNLESS there is a boot time option to
>>>> override the BIOS boot order.
>>>
>>> Why not? It works. Have you tried it? When no boot sector is found
>>> the machine just skips to the next item listed in the boot order.
>
>> Yes I have. I get the same message the OP got.
>
> Then I doubt it was a "naked" hard drive.
>
> I've done this procedure hundreds of times. The benefit is by doing it
> this way you do not have to then go back into BIOS to change the boot
> order later on to protect the machine from accidently booting off of a
> CD/DVD that could wipe the system out.
>

Why would a DVD on boot "wipe the system out" My bios has been set, for
as long as I can remember, to boot the DVD first. I have often
forgtotten to remove a DVD and the bios has automatically gone to my
next option. (HD) Maybe there is a difference in different bios chips,
but my computer boots up on a USB external drive or on the DVD alone,
without a Hard disk being present.
P.S. I would imagine Jrpotts has gone to another site for his answer by
now.


--
uhaligani

"uhaligani" <> wrote in message
news:...
>
> Why would a DVD on boot "wipe the system out" My bios has been set, for
> as long as I can remember, to boot the DVD first. I have often
> forgtotten to remove a DVD and the bios has automatically gone to my
> next option. (HD) Maybe there is a difference in different bios chips,
> but my computer boots up on a USB external drive or on the DVD alone,
> without a Hard disk being present.
> P.S. I would imagine Jrpotts has gone to another site for his answer by
> now.


Depends on the CD/DVD.

- a non-bootable CD/DVD will be skipped over and the next item in the boot
order will be tried

- a Microsoft created bootable CD/DVD (like for installing an OS) will boot,
but then present a prompt (if an OS is detected on the HD) to "Press any key
to boot from CD/DVD". If nothing is pressed it will exit and pass along to
the next device in the boot sequence.

- Some "other" bootable disk might just immediately go into an install
routine. That's where the danger lies and why it's not considered "good
practice" to leave your system as set to boot from the optical drive first.

Thanks for thatinfo (?) I have been around computers for25 years. Whic
OS have you in mind that will go into an automatic install routine.? I
confess I do not play too much with Linux - maybe one of those
varieties. In any of the cases, the install program would have to ask a
few questions to know where to proceed and would stop long before any
damage was done.


--
uhaligani

"uhaligani" <> wrote in message
news:...
>
> Thanks for thatinfo (?) I have been around computers for25 years. Whic
> OS have you in mind that will go into an automatic install routine.? I
> confess I do not play too much with Linux - maybe one of those
> varieties. In any of the cases, the install program would have to ask a
> few questions to know where to proceed and would stop long before any
> damage was done.


No "mainstream" disks off the top of my head.

But I work in the corporate world and it is not uncommon for automated
installation routines to be bootable/no questions asked routines. Last year
when I was upgraded the servers in 900 retail stores, rather than visiting
each store I had a bootable disk that would do the rebuild start to finish
with no user intervention. All the servers were pre-set to HD boot first.
We would just mail the disk to the store and have them pop it in the drive
when received. Even if the server had to be bounced, it would continue to
boot from the HD. When the time came for them to be upgraded, an AT job ran
in the middle of the night which told the BIOS to do a 1-time boot from
optical. The rebuild kicked off on the 1 time boot, and each boot after
that was back to the HD.

The disk was removed and discarded at a later date.

Also, someone malicious could make a bootable disk and hide it in the ISO
for something else one might download. If it's left in your drive overnight
and Windows Update is set to automatic you could wake-up with a formatted
drive.

For these reasons, none of my machines are set to boot optical first.