comp doesnt boot from cd

[Tommy Boomfiger]

i reinstalled xp pro last night after ive been have a huge amount of problems with my system (they were all my fault :P). i couldnt get it to boot off the cd at all. i checked the bios boot setting many times and i know the discs i used (i tried xp pro, 2k, 98se, me; some copies, some originals) are bootable and the previous install was installed using the same cd. i havent flashed the mobo bios, but i might have upgraded the firmware of the cd drive. other than that the hardware configuration has remained the same. i checked the ide cables to make sure they were in the right order. i still cant figure out whats wrong.

so i downloaded a utility to make boot disks from ms. using those i was able to install, but i couldnt partition my hd. it also wouldnt let me choose any install options except language and time.

if i can fix the boot problem, i wont have any problems with the install. if not is there a way to install xp with a boot disk with all the options?

thanks, tommy

[ramazank2]

Go to www.bootdisk.com get a win 98 boot disk. Boot to it. When you can access your cd drive go to the i386 directory (on your winXP pro CD) and type winnt.

if you dont know dos:

A:\ d:
D:\ cd i386
D:\i386\ winnt

[eSDee]

I had a problem once where the computer didn't recognize the Cd-rom during the boot because it was a macintosh CD-rom, and even though you could install the drivers in Windows to get it to recognize it, the bios would not. I had to borrow a CD-rom from another machine for it to recognize the drive.

This probably isn't the problem, but it's damn interesting, isn't it? :P

[zippyjuan]

:bandit: I had problems installing XP on a new system. Two changes in BIOS helped me get it going. I had to change the primary boot selection (it was set to floppy) to the disc drive. I had problems with the HDD selector set to AUTO. I changed it to LBA for my Western Digital 7200rpm and it worked fine.

[Tommy Boomfiger]

ramazank2, thanks for the info, ill check it out tonight

DF, i set the bios to name the cd, not auto detect. both of my cd drives are on the secondary ide channel. my plextor is the master and at position 0. niether drive works. actually, if i boot with a disc in my second drive, the bios wont even recognize the drive. strange.

esdee, ive done it before with the same drive. thats probably not the problem. interesting story though

juan, thanks for the info. ill play around with my settings. maybe that will help

[Tommy Boomfiger]

well, ive used the same bios since mid 2001. the one im running is acutally a beta version that asus never released. if i remember correctly, bires hooked me up with that. it solved a lot of problems and i havent had any new problems since then. i was thinking of reflashing it to see if it will fix anything, but thats a last resort, i dont want to cause any new problems by trying to fix this.

[Tommy Boomfiger]

smokeyjuan.

when i got my new hd my comp would only recognize everything in PIO mode only. so i manually changed everything to how it should be and everything worked in dma as it should.

i just changed all the settins to auto and now i can boot from cd. my hard drives are still showing ultra dma mode 4 but my cd drives are in pio mode. so all i have to do is fix it after i reinstall winblows. thanks dude.

[zippyjuan]

Glad it is working. I have to credit Dark Fury on that one. He gave me the original advice when mine wouldn't work.