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Posted by =?Utf-8?B?TmV3ZWxsIFdoaXRl?= on April 29, 2008, 9:59 am
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"Anteaus" wrote:
> Just a general comment, but wondered what other admins' feelings are on this:
>
> In the days of floppies, if you inserted a boot floppy, then the machine
> would either boot from the floppy, or else not boot at all. Which was
> sensible behaviour.
>
> With CD booting, the machine will possibly boot form the CD, but if that
> fails then it will boot from the hard-disk instead.
>
> This can have several very undesirable consequences:
>
> -If the HD is virus-infected (or might be so) not only do you risk exposing
> the LAN to the virus, but you have to throw away the CD you were trying to
> boot from, as it has no write-protect and therefore may have been
> compromised.
>
> -If you are preparing a rollout, the preparation will be undone and you'll
> have to start all over again.
>
> Strikes me that this 'fall-through to HD boot' mechanism is yet another
> example of the braindead design which we see so often these days. In the old
> days computers were more limited, but what they had was designed to do its
> job and work properly. Not so nowadays.
>
> Strictly speaking this is a BIOS design-issue, not a Microsoft one, but
> thought I'd raise it here anyway.
>
You are right - it is a BIOS design issue.
And if you press the appropriate Fn key at power-up you will get into the
BIOS configuration menu, which will allow you to nominate which devices, and
in which order, are checked for holding bootable content.
--
Regards,
Newell White
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