Use a Boot CD to Boot your Flash Drive on Computers with a BIOS that does not support booting from USB
Boot from USB without BIOS Support; In the following tutorial, I cover how to create a PLoP Boot Manager CD that can be used to force boot from USB without BIOS access. This is also useful to boot a USB on computers with a system BIOS that does not natively support booting from removable USB devices.
To make a USB Boot CD for Linux Mint that allows you to boot Linux Mint from a USB flash drive on systems that do not support USB booting directly, follow the steps below. This guide will walk you through creating a CD that uses the GRUB bootloader to load the Linux Mint kernel and initrd, then detects the USB to load the full Linux Mint OS.
To make a USB Boot CD for Ubuntu that can be used to boot your Ubuntu Live USB flash drive from a PC or Mac with a BIOS that doesn't natively support booting from USB devices, follow these steps. This process replaces our older USB Boot CD for Ubuntu tutorial, with updated requirements for later versions.
How to create a USB Boot CD for Kubuntu. This can be used to boot a Kubuntu Live USB flash drive from a computer with a BIOS that does not natively support booting from USB. The USB boot CD created using this tutorial launches the initrd (Initial Ram Filesystem) along with the necessary USB drivers from the CD, and then tries to boot the squash filesystem from the USB drive.
How to Create a USB Boot CD for Xubuntu. The resulting disc can be used to boot a Xubuntu USB flash drive on computers with a BIOS that does not natively support booting from USB. A Boot CD created via this process works by loading the Initial Ram Filesystem along with any USB drivers from the CD. Because the USB drivers are made available from the Boot CD, the system will then attempt to find, decompress and load the final Xubuntu squash filesystem and casper-rw persistence file (if it exists) from the USB flash drive.
This tutorial will guide you through creating a USB Boot CD that enables you to boot CrunchBang Linux from a USB flash drive on systems that don’t natively support USB booting. By using a GRUB bootloader on the CD, you can load the necessary USB drivers, locate, and extract the compressed filesystem from your flash drive, making CrunchBang Linux accessible even on older hardware. CrunchBang is a unique Linux remix based on Ubuntu, known for its lightweight and efficient design.
The following SLAX USB Boot CD can be used to boot SLAX from a USB device on computers using a system bios that does not natively support booting from USB. It could also be used to boot SLAX Linux from a flash drive on an intel based Apple Mac, MacBook, or MacBook Pro that uses EFI instead of a bios. This USB Boot CD was created by Tomas M (the creator of SLAX).
