Vaio VPCCW13FX won't boot externally or from CD

[dukeofurl]

Hello. I am servicing a Sony Vaio VPCCW13FX for a friend, and I'm trying to move it to Win 8, but I can't get it to boot externally from a USB flash drive, even though I know it's supposed to be capable, but also, I can't get it to boot from the internal CD drive, even though it's capable also.

All this, despite changing the boot order in the bios.

There is no one-time boot menu. This is the most featureless bios I've ever seen. Several options are greyed out and not available also.

Help! I really need it to boot externally so I can image it.

thanks

 

[Laptop_Nerd]

Hi,

Please do try these steps that I got from Sony Support site.

- Shut the computer down, turn it back on and repeatedly press on F2 to load BIOS.
- Once in BIOS look for Security Boot and change it from Enable to Disable.
- Look for External Boot From and change it from Disable to Enable.
- Then you should be able to change the boot order to your liking.
- Press F10 to save all the changes and exit.
- Do try it again after all these settings had been done.

 

[dukeofurl]

Thank you for your reply. UEFI and Secure Boot (The typical Win8 stuff) is not in the bios. This Bios is not ready for UEFI.
There is an External Boot. Switching it has no effect, it might as well not even be there. I have updated the bios, that did not change anything either.
F10, which exits and saves in all bios'es, does not in this one.

 

[dukeofurl]

Well, I think I figured it out. I'm alright with not booting from USB (even though it would be better if I could) but now I can boot from CD. The solution? The drive can't handle RW discs (which I use) so I had to re-burn to a real CD, and it takes that. I haven't seen a drive that couldn't handle RW discs in years, but this one is like that, and it sucks.

 

[ffg7]

did you finalize that rw disk or did you leave it open?