[sloth_davinci]

As stated, my system is a Dell Inspiron 1520, which isn't manufactured here any more, and the last BIOS upgrade was A09. The BIOS detects an external HDD for booting, although I've never tried it, since I'd first have to load an OS onto it to test it, but it doesn't detect my external DVD drive as a boot option, even with a Windows/Linux DVD inside it during BIOS loading. My internal drive is quite paralysed, it hardly reads anything any more, not even blank DVDs, and with a lot of struggling, sometimes manages a CD. DVDs are pretty much out of the question.
Is there a way to hack the BIOS or is there some other BIOS revision that will work on a 1520, either of which option will have the BIOS detecting the external DVD? Please, this is very much an emergency! Just a few hours back while trying to install Nero I ended up being infected with a virus that erased my boot sector! It took me ten minutes of continuous ejecting/reinserting procedure to manage booting via the XP CD and restoring the MBR..

[aka Brett]

USB external?
are you saying that when you tap f12 after powering up that boot from usb device isnt listed?

[sloth_davinci]

Yes, that's the case. I searched a lot last night and today morning (IST), couldn't find any solution. Apparently the BIOS does not read external CD/DVD drives during boot, no matter what you do. I have now returned the external I'd bought for a credit slip and replaced the internal drive with a Hitachi one.
I'm still keeping the thread open for a while to see if any solutions come up.