"esc" & f2 aren't doing it

December 3, 2012 7:47 PM

Booting from a disc on a Toshiba Portege R935 - how?

Restarting with "esc" and "f2" held down allow me to access to BIOS / boot options, but the disc in the drive isn't showing as one of them. What am I missing?

posted by ryanshepard to Computers & Internet (5 answers total)

Best answer: Does F12 give you anything usable?
posted by sageleaf at 8:17 PM on December 3, 2012

Best answer: sageleaf is correct: F12 will get your boot menu... here is a pdf manual for your machine (boot menu information is on page 65)
posted by 1367 at 8:56 PM on December 3, 2012

Response by poster: OK, that did it, but that has resulted in an even more critical question that I'm hoping someone here can answer:

I was attempting to install Ubuntu on a Windows 7 machine - and the Ubuntu installer froze roughly 1/2 way through the install. This was apparently enough to strip Windows off, but not enough to leave me working with an OS.

I now get the black screen w/the blinking cursor on startup - how can I boot from the disc under these conditions, or what do I have to do to get an OS back onto this thing?
posted by ryanshepard at 9:06 PM on December 3, 2012

Response by poster: Please disregard - I was able to boot from the disc via BIOS. Now if I can just get the Ubuntu installer to actually do its job ...
posted by ryanshepard at 9:11 PM on December 3, 2012

Hope it goes well. If you run into further troubles, you might find more detailed answers at askubuntu.com.
posted by 1367 at 9:19 PM on December 3, 2012