Smart Boot Manager is an OS independent Boot Manager which has an easy to use interface and many other features. The main goals of SBM are to be absolutely OS independent, flexible and full-featured with all the features needed to boot a variety of operating systems.

Can read from CD-ROM but will not boot

Installing Ubuntu is normally done by booting the computer with the Ubuntu CD. However, sometimes you'll experience problems booting from the CD-ROM drive. This can be caused by many factors like using an old computer with a BIOS that doesn't support booting from a CD-ROM drive. For other issues concerning booting from CD please see BootFromCD

If you experience such problems when trying to install Ubuntu, please follow these steps:

1. Smart Boot Manager is on the Ubuntu install CD as /install/sbm.bin. For more information and the newest version, please see Smart Boot Manager.

2. Now we need to make a boot floppy.

   • With Windows, use a utility called rawwrite.

     1. Format the floppy disk. For this you may open a command prompt (Start / Run / "cmd") and type format a:

     2. Then use rawrite command: rawrite -f sbm.bin (rawwritewin.exe sbm.bin)

   • In Linux
     1. dd if=sbm.bin of=/dev/fd0
3. Make sure your computer's BIOS has been set so the computer boots from the floppy disk - for instructions on how to accomplish this, please refer to your computer's documentation or manufactures website.

4. Insert the floppy disk and Ubuntu CD, then start or restart the computer. When the Smart Boot Manager's menu appears, choose the menu option with "CD-ROM" in it, and press Enter. If the CD-ROM option does not appear in your boot menu, press tab to see the Smart Boot Manager options and choose Rescan all boot records. The CD-ROM drive should now appear in your boot menu.

5. Congratulations - your computer will now boot from the Ubuntu CD.

Warning SBM is not compatible with parted if installed on hard disk MBR. Parted may detect wrong partition information!

Q&A

But what to do on a PC where SBM does not recognize my SCSI drive?

SBM also does not appear to recognize external USB CD-ROM drives... EricBaenen

Warbo: Does SBM rely on the BIOS for drive detection? I know GRUB does, so booting my USB hard drive which is not recognized by my (slightly old) BIOS needs to be done from a GRUB CD (see BootFromUSB) containing a Linux kernel and initial ram disk image (these files are too big for a floppy), because the Linux kernel can find devices the BIOS can't. If I could use SBM from a floppy to boot a GRUB installed on my USB drive then updating my kernel wouldn't be such an annoyance.

What do I do if it spits out "SBMK bad" from an extracted copy or goes directly to GRUB from an installed copy?

cloakable: SBM appears not to support PCMCIA cdroms. Perhaps proper boot floppies (such as the ones with Slackware) are in order?

BCDL Option

Here is another option that works for most CD-ROM / DVD-ROM's on older computers where you can't change the boot sequence in the BIOS (for some reason, in my case a password protected bios) or SmartBootManager won't work). This worked like a charm... made a floppy with BCDL, got the latest cd/dvd driver file (xcdrom.sys), deleted the old driver file (vide-cdd.sys) off the floppy that came with BCDL and renamed xcdrom.sys to vide-cdd.sys and saved it to the floppy. Stuck the floppy in the floppy drive & the Xubuntu Alt. Install DVD in the DVD-ROM, hit my computer's reset button and presto... BCDL did in 10 minutes what three days of playing around with smartbootmanager couldn't do... it finally booted my DVD-ROM.

http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=1804

PLoP Boot Manager

PLoP Boot Manager seems to allow booting from most drives including external USB CD-ROM/DVD-ROM drives. Follow the instructions to create a boot floppy. Note that booting with a USB keyboard connected is not supported.

Other Languages

• Español: ComoSmartBootManager

• Français : Gestionnaire de démarrage intelligent (SmartBootManager).

• Italiano : SmartBootManagerHowto.

• Português-BR : SmartBootManagerHowto-pt-BR.