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March 13th, 2018 07:00
Optiplex 360: upgrade BIOS using external USB flash drive
I purchased a used Optiplex 360 and installed Slackware-14.2 on it. Now I want to upgrade the BIOS from A02 to the most recent (2011) A06. However, there is no boot sequence option for an external USB flash drive and I've not found a way to add that. My two Dell Latitude portables allow booting from an external USB drive.
The A06 BIOS, an .exe file, is on a flash drive that boots DOS.
How can I add a boot option for flash drives or get it to recognize and installed flash drive and boot from it so I can upgrade the BIOS?
I've not run any Microsoft softtware for > 20 years so that's not an option.
DELL-Alasdair R
4 Operator
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754 Posts
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March 13th, 2018 08:00
Enter into the BIOS/setup, expand Drives then select Diskette Drive and set to USB. It should then appear in the boot menu. Let us know how you get on.
skrambam
5 Posts
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July 12th, 2018 13:00
I have an old OptiPlex 360 and I can find no way at all to get it to boot to any usb port using any thumb drives or external drives. It will boot to the DVD drive. I changed every bios setting and returned it to factory settings. Absolutely fiddled with everything but nothing lets me boot to a usb storage device of any kind. How is this possible? It will list it as an option but refuses to actually boot to it. I can boot to a Clonezilla cd but the external drive is unseen. When booted to Win7 the external drive it totally available.
speedstep
9 Legend
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47K Posts
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July 12th, 2018 15:00
Either install XP or Install WIN9X dos floppy and run that way.
I actually keep a 3.5 inch usb floppy that is bootable to do this on older dells.
Tesla1856
8 Wizard
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17.5K Posts
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July 12th, 2018 19:00
I don't think it will even TRY to boot from a flash-drive unless it is "built" properly ... to be bootable.