i still have an old dell motherboard that wont let me by pressing f11 or something like that , that will allow me to specify which drive to boot from if i have more than one installed. i was looking at a supermicro motherboard on newegg.com . does anyone know if that one or similar will allow me to do that. i know alot of them will like ami. , biostar

It better to set boot order in bios(1.Floopy 2.Cd rom. 3.Hdd)

For a Dell, it's F12 and it's a function of the Dell BIOS (setup). That's if I understand your rambling question. Usually F2 gets you into BIOS where you can set the 1st, 2nd,...boot device. Skip

i want to be able to press an f option and select specifically which drive to boot from like you can with ami or biostar motherboards..here is a list of what mine is capable of,,im seeing that it is selectable boot drive capable Property Value BIOS Version DELL - 7 Phoenix ROM BIOS PLUS Version 1.10 A12 BIOS Date 08/26/04 BIOS Web Page http://www.phoenix.com BIOS Vendor Dell Computer Corporation Version A12 Release 08/26/2004 BIOS Size 512 KB Characteristics - supports booting from LS-120 - supports AGP - supports legacy USB - supports ACPI - Multi Processor supported by BIOS - supports INT 17 printer services - supports INT 14 serial services - supports INT 09 and 8042 keyboard services - supports INT 05 print-screen - supports INT 13 for Japanese Toshiba 1.2M floppy (3.5-inch, 360rpm) - supports Enhanced Disk Drive specification - supports selectable boot - supports booting from CD-ROM - ESCD support is available - allows BIOS shadowing - upgradeable (Flash) BIOS - supports APM - supports Plug-and-Play - supports PCI DMI Version 2.3 @000F0430

"i want to be able to press an f option and select specifically which drive to boot from like you can with ami or biostar motherboards" I'm still not sure what you're asking for? AMI (American Megatrends Inc) is not a type of board, nor is it a board manufacturer, it's a BIOS chip manufacturer (among other things). Biostar boards may use an AMI BIOS, but they may also use an Award or Phoenix BIOS. Your Dell uses a Phoenix BIOS. Different manufacturer's use different keys to access the BIOS setup program. The most common key is probably DEL, but many OEM systems use one of the F-keys (F1, F2, F10, etc). The key options are *usually* displayed at the bottom of the screen during bootup...something like "Press F12 to enter setup". Pay attention to the screen.

There is usually a way to specify which drive to boot from without going into the bios. Did you try hitting F12 as suggested earlier ? If you hit the pause key when booting, it should tell you on the screen which key to hit for the boot order. I have a computer which uses the esc key for that.

Lots of Dell's use F2 (during boot); other (much older) ones used Ctrl+Alt+Enter.