old optiplex wont boot without hard driv

[Avocheeseado]

An old Dell Optiplex 390 says that there is no hard drive detected. There isn't. I have a 64gb usb flash drive plugged into the back with the win 10 disk image file. I have seen on the internet that you can run a computer off a usb drive so how do I get it too boot into windows setup?? Thanks

[kelvinhall05]

Did you set boot priority to the USB?

[Guest]

1 minute ago, Avocheeseado said:

An old Dell Optiplex 390 says that there is no hard drive detected. There isn't. I have a 64gb usb flash drive plugged into the back with the win 10 disk image file. I have seen on the internet that you can run a computer off a usb drive so how do I get it too boot into windows setup?? Thanks

Well you can't with windows. It's just an installer. Some linux distros allow you to try out the system with a live usb.

[Guest]

Also make sure this computer supports booting off USB and that the boot priority is USB HDD first. But with no hard disk to install windows on there isn't really a point to it. 

[Kisai]

1 minute ago, Avocheeseado said:

An old Dell Optiplex 390 says that there is no hard drive detected. There isn't. I have a 64gb usb flash drive plugged into the back with the win 10 disk image file. I have seen on the internet that you can run a computer off a usb drive so how do I get it too boot into windows setup?? Thanks

You might need to turn UEFI boot on to boot it. Or you might have a 32-bit only machine and the machine can't boot a 64-bit image.

 

Dell's bring up the menu with F12, so bring that up, if it's not in UEFI mode you will see "USB drive" or something in the list. If it's in UEFI mode you will see the name of the flash drive under UEFI. If the machine is UEFI capable, it should be booted in UEFI mode.

[abcdefghivjklmnop]

5 minutes ago, Avocheeseado said:

An old Dell Optiplex 390 says that there is no hard drive detected. There isn't. I have a 64gb usb flash drive plugged into the back with the win 10 disk image file. I have seen on the internet that you can run a computer off a usb drive so how do I get it too boot into windows setup?? Thanks

You need a hard drive to run windows properly, so get a hard drive first, set priority in bios to boot usb and then install windows on the hdd.. 

[Avocheeseado]

2 minutes ago, Kisai said:

You might need to turn UEFI boot on to boot it. Or you might have a 32-bit only machine and the machine can't boot a 64-bit image.

 

Dell's bring up the menu with F12, so bring that up, if it's not in UEFI mode you will see "USB drive" or something in the list. If it's in UEFI mode you will see the name of the flash drive under UEFI. If the machine is UEFI capable, it should be booted in UEFI mode.

Yes I've enabled it but still comes up with an error message. I will try a 32 bit installer

 

[Avocheeseado]

2 minutes ago, abcdefghivjklmnop said:

You need a hard drive to run windows properly, so get a hard drive first, set priority in bios to boot usb and then install windows on the hdd.. 

ok, will a 120gb ssd work fine?? Im not planning to do anything too much with it really, just want to see if i can get it working

[abcdefghivjklmnop]

Just now, Avocheeseado said:

ok, will a 120gb ssd work fine?? Im not planning to do anything too much with it really, just want to see if i can get it working

yeah thats perfect. Does your optiplex support m.2/sata 3??

 

[Avocheeseado]

it has no m.2 but I think sata 3- it has an i3 2100 which came out in 2011 so quite old