Thinkpads Forum

In my bios the option to boot from usb (flash or external hd) is inoperable, "grayed out".
My system model is 6475BQ8 ThinkPad T400, my bios is (3.19 ) 08/02/2010.

Reading at the Lenovo site I found this: "The following conventional memory addresses are reserved by the BIOS and others. (When Intel Turbo Memory is installed in your system, conventional memory addresses are reserved 11k bytes more," including "DE000-DF7FF : Reserved for USB BIOS (*b)," which "becomes free by disabling the USB BIOS Option ROM option under Config and USB in the BIOS Setup Utility. This choice will disable booting from USB device and other USB BIOS features."

I clearly didn't read this fine print way at the bottom when I updated my bios. So, the question is whether there is any way to enable usb booting under this bios, or, if not, how I would go about finding a previous bios that allows it and how would I roll back to that? Anyone have any ideas?

You can't just press F12 on start for start-up menu?

emeraldgirl08 wrote:You can't just press F12 on start for start-up menu?

Yes, of course I can, but the option to boot through usbhdd is not operable.

Is there no option for USB BIOS support under Config > USB?

I have a similar problem. I have a T40 2373-82U. I have bios 3.23. Previously the BIOS was 1.xx and I never had the unit long enough to test the USB booting before upgrading the BIOS.

Under the BIOS boot menu, USB-HDD as a boot option is listed as "not active" meaning it won't show as an option if I hit F12 on bootup. In the same menu, it says to press "x" in include or exclude the selected item. Pressing "x" when USB-HDD is selected does nothing.

And yes, USB BIOS support is set to "enabled".

I do have two different types of RAM (not sure which is which) one is a 1gb and the other is 256k. Maybe that has something to do with this, in the memory allocation you refer to?

if it is a usb HDD, it needs to spin up in order to be recognized by the bios. on my T61, I solved that by enabling always on USB, and plugging in the drive before I turned it on so it was ready to go. on an older system (like a t41), I found that I had to soft reboot (ctrl-alt-delete) or restart in windows so that the drvie does not loose power.

This should not matter for a thumb drive, since they do not have the platters to start spinning.
Good luck

Agreed; I have the same issue with my T400 in that it requires a soft-reboot. Don't quite feel like turning on Always on USB, and I don't mind soft rebooting (I usually get distracted and miss the F12 window )

Colonel O'Neill wrote:Agreed; I have the same issue with my T400 in that it requires a soft-reboot. Don't quite feel like turning on Always on USB, and I don't mind soft rebooting (I usually get distracted and miss the F12 window )

Can you look to see what bios you are running with your t400? The problem I am having (and, I think the problem being experienced by the other poster upstream) is not that we are using the wrong process for a usb hdd or flash drive, but that the most recent bios has reconfigured things so that the option to access anything through usb during boot has been made inoperable (and to answer a previous poster, msconfig boot order allows tinkering only with OSs on the hdd).

So I suppose my original question is still the pertinent one, and that is whether a previous bios would allow boot through usb, where such a bios might be found and whether there is a simple, clean way to roll back to it.

I can boot fine through USB; it's just that sometimes, the drives don't show up in a cold boot. I'm running the latest available BIOS on the driver matrix.

I can boot to two external drives, as well as my flash drive. I can't boot to a certain card reader to which X100e can, though.

Colonel O'Neill wrote:I can boot fine through USB; it's just that sometimes, the drives don't show up in a cold boot. I'm running the latest available BIOS on the driver matrix.

I can boot to two external drives, as well as my flash drive. I can't boot to a certain card reader to which X100e can, though.

You're a fortunate man, Colonel. USB BIOS Support is enabled for me in "USB" under "Config" (along with Always On USB), but option to boot from usb is "excluded from boot order" under "Boot" (along with ATA HDD2 and ATAPI CD1). This is the case even thought on the right on the "Boot" screen it says, "USB BIOS support must be enabled for USB boot." That being the case I'm not sure a soft-reboot would make a difference. Perhaps it would. Just for curiosity, how do you do your soft-reboot?

Essentially, when I miss the F12 window, I jab Ctrl+Alt+Delete furiously hoping it doesn't get into Windows load.

Is the "USB BIOS Support" enabled inside the BIOS config?

Go into BIOS, Config, USB, and see if USB BIOS Support is enabled.

Colonel O'Neill wrote:Essentially, when I miss the F12 window, I jab Ctrl+Alt+Delete furiously hoping it doesn't get into Windows load.

Is the "USB BIOS Support" enabled inside the BIOS config?

Go into BIOS, Config, USB, and see if USB BIOS Support is enabled.

Yep, it's enabled.

Maybe a BIOS settings reset would help? Not sure. I've been able to boot from USB with and without Turbo Memory installed.

Colonel O'Neill wrote:Maybe a BIOS settings reset would help? Not sure. I've been able to boot from USB with and without Turbo Memory installed.

Reset as in reset to default?

Yes, a thumb drive is a "USB" drive, but in order to change the settings in BIOS for an EXTERNAL USB drive you need to go to Config > Serial Port and change that to Enabled. Your USB port is a Serial Port, and that is what must be enabled.