How do I boot off a live CD?

wiwazevedo

Member
I have a old as dirt compaq presario notebook and a linux live cd that I would like my computer to booot off of. I can get to the BIOS menu but I'm not sure what to do from there. I set the boot priority or w/e to cd-rom 1st and i do save and exit and it still comes up windows and i restart and it still comes up windows.
 
You have to go to the boot menu and select to boot off the CD drive. Then something about ISOLINUX will appear if booted correctly.
 
You have to go to the boot menu and select to boot off the CD drive. Then something about ISOLINUX will appear if booted correctly.

If you read his post, he has already done that...

wiwazevedo, just to make sure - you have put the CD in the drive before booting, right?
 
haha

If you read his post, he has already done that...

wiwazevedo, just to make sure - you have put the CD in the drive before booting, right?

i can assure you
the cd IS in the drive. i spent an hour screwing around with this. The only reason why i know there isnt something wrong with the cd is i watched my friend boot off of it. he had a much more modern computer and it was a completely different menu when booting up but it still worked. we were both using pc's
 
There's something about old computers and live cd on the ubuntu website. What are your laptop specs? (personally, I think compaq presario sucks, but hey, whatever works for you ;) ).

Kevinaz
 
You may have a CD drive that can't be booted from. I know they exist and they're more common on older machines.
 
try using an external CD Drive to boot from the disc, i think its down do you cd drive that can't be booted from

I seriously doubt that would work. Most computers until fairly recently didn't support USB booting... At least not without booting from perhaps a floppy first than installing USB drivers.

I assume the laptop can read the disk fine in windows? I'm not sure just how old this laptop is, but I have seen older CD-ROMs that had problems with burnt CDs and DVDs. And how about other disks? Can it boot from other disks just fine?
 
i figured it out guys. it was the cd's fault. and yees the compaq presario sux but it wasnt my choice it was a handme down comuter. its not my main computer its just an extra laptop
 
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