If I want to distribute some software on a bootable CD, is there a way (from windows) to force the machine to restart onto the CD OS, even if the BIOS is not setup with boot from CD?
+1
A:
You can probably make some changes to boot files so that it ignores windows for now, but you're essentially breaking somebodys OS this way.
Robus
2010-05-09 01:18:59
That would be quite bad, after all the CD OS could change the boot file back upon proper shutdown, but if it's improperly shutdown you've just trashed the windows install :/
Martin
2010-05-09 01:22:53
+1
A:
I think NO...
Boot device selection happens before starting the initialization process of a certain OS. In other words the hardware system will select a drive and then it will try to execute the bootstrap available on the given hardware drive.
So even if you change any setting in windows, you get the control after booting Windows. It is too late.
But perhaps you may have a way with boot.ini pointing your CD drive as a partition, but I don't know whether it is ethical to do such changes in a guest machine. If I wanted to do this I will not use this way.. :)
Chathuranga Chandrasekara
2010-05-09 02:23:13
So you could not run some kind of bootloader inside windows which loads a new OS into memory, and then hands control over to that? I'm guessing not from the very little knowledge I have of bootloaders
Martin
2010-05-09 10:17:08
@Martin : You are talking about a something like a virtual machine. :)
Chathuranga Chandrasekara
2010-05-09 13:31:09
Possibly, but not just a virtual machine which runs as a program in another OS, since if the real OS is infected, then the VM can be monitored. You'd need a VM which is started by the real OS, and then the real OS shuts itself down so that any infections are taken with it.
Martin
2010-05-09 13:54:50
+2
A:
No, sorry, there is no way to do this because there is no standard BIOS interface to allow programmatically changing the boot order. As you infer in your question, the BIOS (CMOS Setup, to be exact) is the place where the boot order is kept. You cannot guarantee what boot device the user will select on next boot.
William Leara
2010-05-09 02:31:12