What is the proper boot sequence?

[tigersty1e]

I have 3 items to boot... hard drive, floppy drive, or dvd-rom drive.

What order should I list them for reliable operation of my computer?

I'm running XP Pro.

 

[mattest2542]

For me I do them in order of priority, So in your case I would do harddrive, dvdrom and then floppy.

 

[RMSe17]

I usually do floppy, cd-drive, hard-drive.

This way, I dont need to go into BIOS every time I want to boot up to a floppy or a CD (which means I never have to go to BIOS again), and the delay of the system checking floppy and cd drives is insignificant to me.

 

[stevf]

doesnt matter that much for reliability.

I like CD, Floppy, then Hard Drive, so you can boot from CD when you need/want to

 

[amdskip]

99% of the time you are booting from the hard drive so why not put it first?

 

[stevf]

my reasons - but it is really personal preference

1. when you do need to boot from cd, no need to go into bios

2. boot from hd as last item does make the boot process take several seconds longer, but I boot from CD often enough I dont mind.

If you never want to boot from CD or dont mind going into bios on the occasion you need to boot from CD, then nothing wrong with HD first.

 

[JEDIYoda]

There really is noproper boot sequence

 

[LOUISSSSS]

1. Hard drive
2. Optical
3. Blank (no floppy in my pc)

i boot from cd only when running memtest or reformatting, aka <1% of the time

 

[piasabird]

Floppy Dont even have one???
cdrom
harddrive

You may want it like this till you get the OS installed. Makes it easier to boot from CD/DVD and then install the OS. The OS on the other hand may start faster if you are not looking for the CD/DVD.

 

[thirdlegstump]

Foot->Socks->Boots