On Monday 21 January 2002 11:36 am, you wrote:
> In an effort to keep others from messing around with his system, the
> builder of my brother's pc has the boot sequence set to look to the hard
> drive C:\  then A:\. In the advent of a major problem, how is the builder
> going to be able to access the hdd and/or utilities to solve the problem?
> Is that not the purpose of looking to A:\ first? Thanx in advance for any
> insight.
>
> Al Thompson

Al:
It makes some sense to set the default boot to the hard drive. The system
will boot more quickly, there won't be any crunchy sounds if there is no disk
in the drive, and there won't be error messages about a non-system disk if
there is a disk in the drive that doesn't have system tracks on it. There's
also a security angle -- once upon a time, viruses were transmitted via
corrupted floppies, and booting with one of those disks could bring your
whole system down and, in some cases, actually do such nasty things as
blowing the video card or monitor.

As for system maintenance, it's a relatively simple matter to change the boot
sequence by entering the BIOS unless BIOS access has been restricted by use
of a password. My advice would be to leave it as it is, but be sure that you
know how to enter the BIOS. While this information is usually contained in
the first boot screen, there are systems (Compaqs come to mind) that do not.

Regards,
Carroll Grigsby

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