You're Going to Recover your Data but You Need to Change Your Boot Order First...

If you’re like most people, you think of your computer as a really important, very powerful and mysterious gadget. It’s a bit like your body, you need it, you expect it to work, but when it doesn’t you usually want a specialist and you want him or her NOW! More and more these days people are a bit suspicious of specialists who give them self-serving advice. For example, you might have a cold and all you need is some rest, but the doctor prescribes some $50 prescription that helps the pharmaceutical companies more than it helps you, not to mention the dent in your pocketbook.

What if your computer gets sick? If you don’t want to hand your computer to a complete stranger so that he can poke around in your private data, then you need to read up on how to do-it-yourself if you have the Blue Screen of Death and you need to make your computer work for you. In almost every case, you can pick up Selkie Rescue or Selkie Freedom, insert them into your computer, turn it on and then just follow the instructions so that in five minutes your data is on the way to be back in YOUR control instead of trapped in your sick computer.

Sometimes, though, your computer will not boot from the CD drive as its first choice. What that means is, even though it’s broken it will just keep trying to start from the mangled hard drive instead of from the Selkie CD. If this happens, don’t panic, don’t cry uncontrollably, and don’t feel like you have to take your computer into a field and beat it with a baseball bat (remember that great scene from Office Space?)

You will have to do something called ‘changing the boot order’ of your computer. Sometimes it’s called ‘changing the boot sequence’ and I know it sounds really complicated, but it’s not. It takes less than five minutes, including the time for deep breathing with your head tucked between your legs, and it’s easy. I’ll tell you how to do it, and once it’s done you just restart your computer and your Selkie CD will take it from there! Easy peasy.

Setting Your Computer to Boot from the CD

Most computers are set up so that when you first turn on your computer it will check to see if you want to boot from other drives besides your hard drive but sometimes computers won’t boot from the CD drive first. To change the “boot order” or start up sequence of your computer, you need to take five minutes to enter the system BIOS setup screen. Press the correct key for your specific system (see Table 1) to enter BIOS setup.

Caution:
Working in the BIOS setup screens allows you to change many important settings. It’s best to just stick to the boot order, and later, if you want, you can go into the bios and change it back.

1. Look for where it says Boot and enter the sub menu.
2. Select Boot Sequence, and press Enter. Table 2 shows an example of the boot sequence screen.

The screen you’re looking for may be under Advanced BIOS Features or Advanced Boot Options. Use the arrow keys to navigate.

If the next screen looks similar to Table 2, then you are in the right place. Note that there are not a ton of options in a BIOS, so just go through every page if you have to until you see something like First Boot Device, Boot Order, Boot Management, Boot Sequence, etc.

As you can see, there is a First, Second and Third Boot Device. Scroll down and use the arrow keys to change the device to HDD (hard drive), Floppy, CDROM, or Network.

Finally, go to Exit and make sure you choose Yes to the Save configuration changes and exit now? question.

*note: If you are using a USB Keyboard and cannot get into the BIOS, you might need to use a standard PS2 Keyboard.

This works even if you’re trying to change the boot sequence for any other reason – and you can select the floppy drive if you can find any antique boot floppy disks around and you want to revisit ancient tech!