Can you change the boot order from windows?

[Tjj226_Angel]

Fall semester started a few days ago and I am taking a lot of engineering courses. As a result all the students get to use workstation type laptops in class, however there is a problem. The IT guys were so anal about security of their laptops, that they have practically made it impossible to use any of the programs we need for class and homework. The IT department said they would get it fixed, but I have a solution that might offer a bit more perks (provided that it works).

 

Now since I have all the programs such as matlab and CAD already, I was thinking about using the 60GB agility 3 I recently purchased from Qeenz as a separate boot drive that I could simply use for my classes. The primary reason why I think this would be a great idea is so that instead of writing down all my notes based off the result of my calculation or whatever, I could just take a screen shot and save it to my drive instead and simply plug it into any of my computers at home to study.

 

However, there is a problem. The school has administrator locks, BIOS locks, and every type of lock known to man on these laptops. Now I was contemplating how I would be able to change the boot order of the drives so that I could boot from my drive and then I remembered that the windows install CD usually has the option to allow you to restart and boot from the disk without going into the BIOS at all. I was wondering of there would be a program that I could use to do essentially the same thing with an external drive.

[dr_bowtie]

if you clear the CMOS it removes the BIOS lock

[Tjj226_Angel]

if you clear the CMOS it removes the BIOS lock

 

And how would I do that without removing the Cmos battery?. We can't take the laptops home, and I seriously doubt the teacher would let us mess around with the laptop.

 

My access to the laptop is strictly limited to the case or body of the laptop, and the non administrator windows desktop.

[Coors]

Don't think you can bypass the BIOS afaik without clearing it.

[dr_bowtie]

cant you use your own laptop?

[airman]

In other words, no - I don't believe there is a way to change the boot order from windows.

[MJCRO]

I found this.

[Coors]

Thats for more than one OS. Won't change the boot order for devices in the BIOS.

[Waco]

On boot there should be a key to choose a one time boot menu (f12 or escape generally). Do you have an external enclosure for it? Why not just screens the results and stick them on a thumb drive?

[Tjj226_Angel]

On boot there should be a key to choose a one time boot menu (f12 or escape generally). Do you have an external enclosure for it? Why not just screens the results and stick them on a thumb drive?

 

The laptops won't let you use the screen shot button. In other words it has been disabled. Seriously, these people are so uptight about people messing with their computers that it really starts to hinder the performance of the machine. For instance some of the drivers are old and the school won't update them so you can get some freezes right in the middle of your quiz.

 

If the laptop wasn't so suffocating (which by the way I can not use my laptop because the teacher is convinced that my or anyone else's laptop is too slow) then I would probably use a flash drive, or simply email the files to myself.

 

I will try your trick though on Monday. Queenz said he was going to ship me my drive, and I already have my enclosure on the way.

[MJCRO]

Thats for more than one OS. Won't change the boot order for devices in the BIOS.

 

Ahhh derp.

[Waco]

Print screen is disabled? Lol...