UNSOLVED

JimmyKumbaya

updated

20 years ago

0

19344

October 26th, 2006 18:00

Access BIOS Programmatically (MS-DOS Level)?

I know this is an esoteric problem, but I'm hoping someone's come across this before. I boot my PowerEdge servers and OptiPlex workstations from USB memory keys, USB external hard drives, and CD-ROMs. Is there a way to programmatically access the boot settings from DOS, such that I can change the boot order without going into the BIOS via F2 during boot? What I'm after is the ability to (for instance) boot from the CD-ROM, run an imaging utility, then configure the BIOS to boot from the hard drive; otherwise, unless I eject the CD, the system would continuously boot the CD: I need a way to break out of that loop.

Thanks for any info,

--
Jim
  • dorkmatt

    4 Posts

    655

    0

    Posted November 3rd, 2006 22:00

    Check out the Deployment Toolkit known as "DTK", see dtk-1.3-dos-A04.exe.
  • 655

    0

    Posted November 7th, 2006 11:00

    Wow. That's what I was looking for. I'll see if it works on Dimensions/OptiPlexes, but the PowerEdges was the important one. Thanks much for taking the time to reply.
  • dorkmatt

    4 Posts

    655

    0

    Posted November 7th, 2006 16:00

    I can confirm the tools work with the PowerEdge 8th generation servers, not sure about the 1950/2950s though.