PC wont boot from CDROM

Adam18290 · 6 May 2007 at 20:48

Mate, im pretty sure the cd rom aint been recognised b4 windows loads, i took a quick glimpse and its only detecting IDE at the start, my hard drive. What now

Chunk

MarcLister · 6 May 2007 at 20:50

Adam18290 said:
Mate, im pretty sure the cd rom aint been recognised b4 windows loads, i took a quick glimpse and its only detecting IDE at the start, my hard drive. What now

Chunk

I know it looks obvious but if you can download the Linux then just check it out so we can eliminate the Windows CD. Otherwise see if you can borrow another CD/DVD drive from someone long enough to pop the Windows CD into it and see if it boots.

Or find your motherboard manual and read through it and see if there is a setting hidden away somewhere that might fix this.

Adam18290 · 6 May 2007 at 20:55

ok, im gonna start burning that in a sec, is "ubuntu" another name for linux or what :S

After ive burned it, just leave it in my drive and rr yea? my cdrom is still first in boot sequence so if my windows xp disk is faulty then linux should start to load?

Or just the message at the bottom of the screen should appear, "boot from cd blah blah"?

Chunk

MarcLister · 6 May 2007 at 20:57

Adam18290 said:
ok, im gonna start burning that in a sec, is "ubuntu" another name for linux or what :S

After ive burned it, just leave it in my drive and rr yea? my cdrom is still first in boot sequence so if my windows xp disk is faulty then linux should start to load?

Or just the message at the bottom of the screen should appear, "boot from cd blah blah"?

Chunk

Yeah Ubuntu is a kind of Linux OS. There are many "flavours" of Linux and Ubuntu is one of the more popular/easy to use of the different Linux kinds.

And yeah, just leave it in there and it should boot up. Its not the same message as Windows use, but it'll be something similar.

Let us know what the result is.

NathanE · 6 May 2007 at 21:01

Does the CDROM light flash at all during the boot process? If it does then it means it has attempted to boot from the disc but couldn't find a boot sector on it (so it's a bad Windows disc). If it doesn't flash then something is FUBAR with the CDROM drive I'd guess.

Adam18290 · 6 May 2007 at 21:05

Ok, what should happen if I just insert it while im on desktop, should ne thing come up like it does on xp?

MarcLister · 6 May 2007 at 21:05

Adam18290 said:
Ok, what should happen if I just insert it while im on desktop, should ne thing come up like it does on xp?

Hmm nothing should happen I think.

NathanE · 6 May 2007 at 21:08

An auto-play menu comes up.

That's completely seperate to the boot sector that is used at bootup.

If you've burnt this CD yourself it may be that you did it wrong so it hasn't included the boot sector.

Adam18290 · 6 May 2007 at 21:11

well im only saying to make sure ive burnt the linux copy correctly

Also that XP disk is almost brand new, and i have used it b4 too. Think its been used in total 3 times b4 and been kept in plastic protector bags at all times

Adam18290 · 6 May 2007 at 21:20

Ok, my first burn attempt went wrong, i go to my computer and its literally the iso file just sitting there. I set it to be a bootable disc. Im using "CD Burner XP pro 3"

MarcLister · 6 May 2007 at 21:23

Adam18290 said:
Ok, my first burn attempt went wrong, i go to my computer and its literally the iso file just sitting there. I set it to be a bootable disc. Im using "CD Burner XP pro 3"

Whoa. Use this instead. http://www.imgburn.com/index.php?act=download

I used to use CD Burner XP but I gave up on it when I found ImgBurn.

NathanE · 6 May 2007 at 21:28

Yup ImgBurn or D-Tools + Nero is usually the best for burning raw image (.bin/.iso) files.

Adam18290 · 6 May 2007 at 21:39

whats the difference in just loading up the xp disk in desktop and trying to start the install from there?

MarcLister · 6 May 2007 at 21:41

Adam18290 said:
whats the difference in just loading up the xp disk in desktop and trying to start the install from there?

Trying to boot the PC using the CD requires the use of the boot sectors. In Windows the boot sectors aren't used because there is already an operating system booted up.

NathanE · 6 May 2007 at 21:42

Adam18290 said:
whats the difference in just loading up the xp disk in desktop and trying to start the install from there?

One uses a boot sector (invisible to the human eye...) and the other uses an "autorun.inf" file on the root of the CD

Adam18290 · 7 May 2007 at 14:39

Hi guys, soz for not replying, had an urge to just change the drive over and see what happened.
Anyway I changed my cd drive over, went into bios and only the hdd was being recognised, anyway i did an auto detect on the slave of my IDE cable, and it recognised the cd rom.
Anyway it then let me boot from cd and did a format and sorted everything out last nite and this morning.
Only thing is, i dunno whether it was the drive or the auto detection in BIOS that let me boot from cd lol, nvm.

Thanks v.much for your help MarcLister and NathanE

Chunk

MarcLister · 7 May 2007 at 15:40

Adam18290 said:
Hi guys, soz for not replying, had an urge to just change the drive over and see what happened.
Anyway I changed my cd drive over, went into bios and only the hdd was being recognised, anyway i did an auto detect on the slave of my IDE cable, and it recognised the cd rom.
Anyway it then let me boot from cd and did a format and sorted everything out last nite and this morning.
Only thing is, i dunno whether it was the drive or the auto detection in BIOS that let me boot from cd lol, nvm.

Thanks v.much for your help MarcLister and NathanE

Chunk

Good news! So when you say "change the drive over" what do you mean? Change the CD drive over to another cable? If so then it sounds like the CD drive and hard disk were on the same IDE cable?