How to Change the Boot Sequence in the BIOS

Want to change the boot order on your Windows computer? By changing the boot order, you can force the computer to boot from a CD / DVD drive, USB stick, or even offline.

Changing the boot order on a PC is usually done to boot from a recovery disc or from an OEM disc that is running some kind of Windows recovery software such as the recovery console. It also comes in handy when you need to perform an offline virus scan.

Change the boot order

So, here are the steps to change the boot sequence for PC:

Step 1. The first thing you need to do is restart your computer and enter BIOS. You can enter BIOS when you see a message such as â€œPress FX to enter setupâ€ or similar.

On Dell computers this is usually F2 or F12, Toshiba F1 or ESC, HP F1 or F2, and IBM usually requires you to go to Start, Programs, and then Thinkpad CFG to run in BIOS.

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Step 2: Now that you are in BIOS, the next part is to find the boot order partition. Note that there are not many options in BIOS, so just scroll through each page if necessary until you see something like first boot device, boot order, boot control, boot sequence, boot, etc.

It can also be found under Advanced BIOS Features or Advanced Boot Options. In the screenshot above, it is located in the Advanced BIOS Features section. Use the arrow keys to navigate.

As you can see, there are the first, second and third boot devices. Scroll down and use the arrow keys to change the device to HDD (Hard Disk Drive), Floppy, CDROM or Network. You can also have a BIOS that looks like this:

Instructions for changing the load order are in the sidebar, but you usually need to press the + or – buttons to move items up and down in the order list. The first item in the list is what will be scanned first on boot. If no bootable media is found, it will try the second device, and so on. In the above case, I just need to hit Enter on one of the items and that gives me a list to choose from.