How do I boot Tiny11 without a USB stick?
Q
As a regular reader for a few years I’ve enjoyed taking on your various projects. The most recent one I tackled was the Tiny11 (www.snipca.com/49448) project from Issue 670 (page 60) – to put a lightweight version of Windows 11 on an old laptop.
I have a 14-year-old HP G61 laptop that’s ideal for this project. Downloading the tool went fine, but Tiny11 is too big to put on a DVD so I put it on an 8GB USB stick. I then entered my G61’s BIOS, ready to change the startup sequence to USB – but there’s no USB option. I can choose only the optical drive or floppy disk.
Any thoughts on my next move? Frank Hill
A
We don’t know your exact laptop model but, given its age, you might be out of luck on the ability to start up from a USB stick. We know you’ve accessed the BIOS to try to change the boot order, but some HP laptops also have a separate Boot
Device Options menu – have you tried that? When you switch on the machine, first press Escape (Esc) to access the BIOS Startup Menu, then press F9 to see what boot options are available. You could also try updating your machine’s BIOS to the latest available from HP. Visit its support page, at www. snipca.com/49375, to see what you can find for your model. Here, click ‘Detect my software and drivers’ to see if you need a BIOS update (see screenshot): it’s very possible that a later BIOS will add the ability to boot from a USB stick.
If this doesn’t help, you can burn a DVD from the Tiny11 ISO file and boot that way. We think you might be confused by the fact that Tiny11 needs 8GB of hard-drive space to run. However, the ISO file itself is just 4.2GB, and will fit on a standard DVD.