Cannot Change Boot Order - PC Hardware Questions & Answers

Seth writes in with a hardware question:

Question:I have an XP computer that I want to reformat. The problem is my BIOS is all greyed out, not allowing me to change the boot order. I need to change 1st boot to CDROM so I can use my partition commander to reformat Please help me!

Answer: Do you have any SATA drives with any RAID configuration setup on your computer? If so see if you can disable it.

Another thing to try is to disconnect all hard drives, CDROMS and the floppy drive and see if it makes a difference after booting with everything unplugged.

You can also try to remove the CMOS battery and leave it out for awhile to see if that resets the BIOS.

Have you tried setting the motherboard to the factory defaults? There should be an option for that in your BIOS.

Another option is to look for a BIOS upgrade. Just be careful to follow the instructions exactly to avoid ruining your motherboard.

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