TonyG

After years of use, I conclude with any windows operating system, it becomes slower over time, I notice that some virus checkers/Firewalls are making this even more painful. Licencing issues and office/microsoft updates are also contributing to this, making using Microsoft, become painful and almost pointless for day to day stuff. I have recently switched to (free) Ubuntu and am pleasantly surprised, the more I use this and its free apps (compatable office and email etc) the less I use MS, I also noted that dual booting I can always switch back if needed, I like the way Ubuntu imports your settings into its Operating system, and the way you can still view files in your Microsoft partition when you use dual boot. I wont be switching back unless there are apps that wont run in Ubuntu.

I have a Hi-Grade Laptop, Model VA250, the DVD Drive is faulty, and I need to connect an External USB DVD drive to reload the operating system. It appears that, although the external USB device is recognised during the power on messages, when I go into the BIOS Boot Devices section, to position the device boot order , the device is NOT being displayed here. I presume this is because the Bios needs upgrading, I am currently running Phoenix Bios Version 1.0B-V 08-8A20. Can anyone direct me to a valid updated bios, or help?? Kind Regards Tony