How to boot from E drive?

I am new at this. I upgraded my Windows XP to Windows 7 and it runs fine. My Dell desktop computer came from the factory with a floppy for the A drive and a CD in D and a DVD in E. If I want to boot from a disk, the machine looks to the A drive only. I want to change this so it will look to my DVD, E drive instead. I want the change to be permanent.

I posted this question and was told how to get into the BIOS to change it. That worked great and was right on point however, I can't ID which is the E: drive. What I have is:

I got into the BIOS Boot Sequence. It shows:

1. Onboard or USB CD-ROM Drive
2. Onboard SAIA Hard Drive
3. Onboard IDE Hard Drive (not present)
4. Onboard or USB Floppy Drive
5. USB Device (not present)


On my computer, I have

A: Floppy
C: Hard Drive
D: CD ROM
E: DVD

When the computer boots, the CD drivelight flashes, then the DVD drive light flashes then, fifteen seconds later, the A Drive flashes. I put my Windows disk into the DVD drive and rebooted to see if the machine would boot from the disk and it did not.

How can I be certain that my computer will boot from the DVD on my E drive?


Thanks again, Joe

Your boot sequence is correct for the drives you have in your PC. Are you sure the discs you're trying to boot from are, in fact, bootable?

I have the Windows 7 upgrade disk from Microsoft. It should boot from that?????

Go into your BIOS and set the DVD drive as the first boot device. It should work then.

It's usually in the Advanced BIOS settings section.

His DVD drive is set as the first boot device.