PLoP Boot Manager Lets You Boot From An USB Even If The BIOS Doesn't Support It

PLoP Boot Manager is a small program to boot different operating systems harddisk, floppy, CD/DVD or from USB. The interesting part about PLoP is that it can boot from an USB even without BIOS support so if you have an old computer with no BIOS USB boot support (and the same goes for CD/DVD) and want to install Linux (or Windows), you may want to give it a try. The boot manager itself can reside on a floppy, CD or on a network and you can install it on your harddisk. There is no extra partition required for the boot manager.

PLoP Boot Manager is not open source, but is free for personal and commercial use.

An important note for Linux users: install LILO or GRUB to the boot sector of your Linux instead of the Master Boot Record (MBR). The PLoP Boot Manager is not a Linux loader and cannot start Linux without LILO, GRUB, Syslinux and similar!


PLop Boot Manager features:

• CD/DVD boot without BIOS support
• USB boot without BIOS support (UHCI, OHCI and EHCI)
• Floppy boot
• Different profiles for operating systems
• Define up to 16 partitions
• No extra partition for the boot manager
• Hidden boot, maybe you have a rescue system installed and the user should not see that there is another system installed
• Boot countdown
• Hide partitions
• Password protection for the computer and the boot manager setup
• Backup of partition table data
• Textmode user interface 80x50
• Graphic user interface 640x480, 800x600, 1024x786, 1280x1024
• MBR partition table edit
• Start of the boot manager from harddisk, floppy, USB, CD, DVD
• Starting from Windows boot menu
• Starting from LILO, GRUB, Syslinux, Isolinux, Pxelinux (network)
• It can be used as ISA/PCI option ROM
• The boot manager is freeware

Limitations: USB floppy, USB CD/DVD ROM, USB keyboards, SATA CD/DVD drives and PCMCIA Card - are all not supported.


For more info and exact how-to use, see PLoP Boot Manager homepage.