Strange booting problem

[Gordon Messmer]

On 06/24/2015 05:47 PM, jd1008 wrote:
> Well, that is strange!!! It really says that BIOS is busted
> and does not have the good sense to realize the drive is not
> bootable - just as in the case of having an audio CD in the
> CD drive, and it ignores the presenc of the audio CD and
> moves on to the next item (USB drive), which is also not
> bootable, and none of it's partitions are marked bootable.

That's not how BIOS booting works.

Each device in the boot order is searched for boot loader code.  If code 
is found, control is handed off, and that code is expected to boot the 
system.  There's no timeout, because BIOS is no longer in control of the 
system.

The bootable flag isn't used by the BIOS at all.  It's used by DOS boot 
loaders to determine which partition to continue boot from.

Your USB drive appears to have boot code of *some* kind in the MBR. Your 
BIOS isn't broken.  Dell did not "f*** up".  You just need to clear the 
boot sector.  You can do that with:
     dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb bs=446 count=1

Standard disclaimers apply: Back up your data first.  Double check the 
command before following advice from some rando on the internet.  etc.

> I think that what I will resort to is unplugging the usb drive
> for the first few seconds to let the BIOS select internal HD
> and start the boot, then plugin in the USB drive.
> Sometimes, I do need to boot from a USB drive.

You could do that, or you could change the boot order to boot HDD before 
USB, and use F12 when you need to boot USB.

Otherwise, you can't do a remote reboot because you won't be there to 
unplug the USB drive.