Problem installing OS from USB (BIOS problem?)

Hi guys,

I'm trying to install W10 (I know there's a ten forum but I don't think this is specific to W10 so I'm asking here because you people are awesome) from USB on a custom built, but relatively old desktop. It's currently running XP. The BIOS doesn't recognize USB in the boot menu. However, if I go into the HDD menu to see the connected drives, the USB is present there. If I change it to set the USB stick to primary, rather than the desktops actual HDD and go back to the boot menu the USB drive appears and I can select it as the 1st boot device. It will then boot and the installation begins but fails, I think this is because when the USB stick is selected as primary it's ignoring the HDD - thus nowhere to install to. Bottom line being, I can't seem to get both the USB drive and the PC's HDD to appear in the boot menu at the same time.

I've tried selecting USB as primary, going to the boot menu, selecting USB as 1st boot device and then sneakily going back to the drive menu to re-select the HDD as primary, but then USB disappears as a bootable option.

I can't run the installer from within XP as the USB drive is not recognised, well it recognises it's plugged in (Found new hardware, Kingston Datatraveler) but won't install the driver. I'm assuming this is because the USB stick is 16GB and XP doesn't like flash drives of such capacity.

Do any of you fabulous forum members have any ideas how I can get around this?

I think this would happen even if I was trying to install 7 from USB which is why I've posted here.

Thanks Paul, good info as always! It's not my Tosh that's giving me a headache, it's an old ish desktop I built years ago and gave to my mother. It's running XP and I've put off the upgrade for as long as I can but the time has come! Ill definitely have a look to see if there's some keystroke combo I can tap to get this resolved. It's an American Megatrends BIOS if that helps.

Finally got this to install, after much hassle and bewilderment. There was no keystroke combo and no option to add another boot device. Basically what I've done is disable fast boot and set the USB to HDD1 and try again. The install hung up on 5% so I lost my temper and reset it, tried again and it has succeeded this time. Can't get the Wi-Fi working but I've posted in ten forums about that. I always seem to get these weird problems!

I hope all goes well with you regarding Windows 10. The potential problem I foresee is that Windows 10 is constantly evolving, constantly changing and getting newer; but your computer is not. Your computer has to be pretty old, since it was running XP. Hopefully it doesn't become obsolete soon.