formatting pc (cdrom doesnt show in boot menu)

zepplin · 25 Nov 2006 at 01:27

hello,
im trying to format my pc and reinstall windows, however in the bios, under boot priority, my cdrom does not show up. Its a dell pc, is there any other way of gettin it to oot from cd?

cheers!

Macabre · 25 Nov 2006 at 02:16

Just wondering but does your dell have a built in recovery? you could always just recover using "r" at startup then do a full format or a quick format and recover.

Fars · 25 Nov 2006 at 02:33

I blame evil spirits possessing your cdrom personally.

sja360 · 25 Nov 2006 at 02:44

how old is the dell pc?

zepplin · 25 Nov 2006 at 15:41

ive had the pc for 2 years now,... its the dell dimension 8400 is thats any help

sja360 · 25 Nov 2006 at 16:01

does the dell machine come with a recovery floppy disk?

zepplin · 25 Nov 2006 at 16:33

nah doesnt seem to have come with a floppy disc

K.C. Leblanc · 25 Nov 2006 at 17:00

I can't give exact instructions because I don't know Dells Bioses (is that the plural of Bios).

Have you tried going into the BIOS and going to the part where you can manualy specify what's connect to the various IDE channels. If the chanel with the CD drive on it is set to auto or none set it to cd rom.

Failing that, check the CD drive is properly connected and actualy working (infact you should probably do that first).

postmanfw · 25 Nov 2006 at 17:10

A mate has a dell pc and had trouble getting it to boot from cd also. It did show up in the boot menu (F12) but didnt seem to do anything. When i just selected normal (option1) it worked. Didnt go into the bios at all though.