Booting from USB on older computers

Booting up directly from a USB device on recent computers is very easy, not so with those older machines especially ones using older bios firmware. Being able to boot your computer from USB flash drive is an advantage because there are so many tools around that can be used to install or repair Windows. These may include such as Antivirus discs, and repair CD’s(Raymond.cc blog) Having them on USB is easier and quicker than burning discs every time.

Installing Windows by running the setup files from a USB drive is also popular because it can be a good bit quicker than installing from a CD/DVD drive, even Windows 8 setup files can be downloaded and copied straight onto USB these days. It depends entirely on the computer’s BIOS as to whether USB booting is supported and some manufacturers may have provided a BIOS update to enable it. However, what if you encounter an old computer that doesn’t support booting from USB?

Thankfully, all is not lost because there is an excellent little tool called Plop Boot Manager which can do the impossible and allow you to boot the computer from USB even if the BIOS does not support it. Plop can boot different operating systems such as Windows or Linux from hard disk, floppy, CD/DVD or from USB.

Using Plop might be useful in two ways; firstly to be able to boot a USB device when you already have Windows installed, maybe loading a Live Linux or a rescue/antivirus disc etc. Another way is when you have no operating system currently loaded and perhaps would like to install one via USB. Here, we’ll show you both ways to install the Plop boot manager, one using the Windows Boot Menu and one from a bootable CD.

Adding Plop To The Windows Boot Menu

The easiest way to set up Plop to boot your USB flash drive is by adding it to the Windows boot menu so when you have the option to choose a Windows installation on boot, you will also have an entry to load the Plop Boot Manager and launch a USB boot.

This isn’t nearly as complicated as it used to be because to get the entries into the boot menu, you used to have to edit the XP boot.ini or manually use BCDEdit in Vista or 7. These days it’s far easier and only requires the execution of a batch file to get the Plop Boot Manager entry inserted into your windows boot menu.

1. Download Plop Boot Manager , then extract it to a folder.

2. Navigate into the plpbt-[version]\Windows folder. Run the InstallToBootMenu.bat file. If you don’t have full admin rights already in Vista and 7, right click on the bat file and “Run as Administrator”.

3. When asked if you want to continue, just press Y and enter. The necessary files will be coped and the boot entry added to the menu.

Now when you boot your computer, the Plop Boot Manager entry will be there and you can now select it and boot from a USB flash drive.

Even though they have different boot menus, running the batch file will create the correct menu entry for both XP or Vista / 7 depending on which you’re using. For anyone who wants to rename the default “Plop Boot Manager” menu entry, open the InstallToBootMenu.bat, look for “set ENTRYNAME=Plop Boot Manager” and change it to what you want.

If your computer is old enough to not even have a boot from CD-ROM option, a floppy version of Plop can be downloaded from the website and it can be used to boot a CD in a similar way. When we tried tried Plop on a laptop that couldn’t boot from USB, it was able to boot up a Windows 7 or 8 setup from USB and install the operating system with no problems at all Download Plop boot manager