cant boot from cdrom

S

surfshack66

New Member
even after changing my bios, i cannot get my dell to boot from cdrom, its a dimension 8400 and im reintalling windows xp cause it cant take vista that well
 
If the system there lacks an optional boot device menu and you have to set the cd rom as the first boot device simply disable anything else and remember to press any key when that comes up on the screen following the initial post tests. That will force the system to look to the optical drive for boot information and should see the installer load unless the drive or drive cable has a problem.
 
PC eye said:
If the system there lacks an optional boot device menu and you have to set the cd rom as the first boot device simply disable anything else and remember to press any key when that comes up on the screen following the initial post tests. That will force the system to look to the optical drive for boot information and should see the installer load unless the drive or drive cable has a problem.
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thanks for the response..unfortunately i have tried disabling everything else and it just says unable to boot from device..or similiar...so what do you suggest i do or fix
 
Here I will occasionally see a stubborn drive when needing to boot with the dvd burner for things like redoing the Vista mbr due to multibooting with XP and Linux. I may have to hit the reset button a few times or shut the system off then on again to see the disk suddenly booted from.

Another thing to look at is the actual disk for any scratches and smudge marks from handling that could cause a loading problem when it simply isn't being read fully. The merhod mentioned before is a simple way to force boot from any optical drive installed without seeing any hard drive, floppy, or other type of device available.

If your drive needs a good lens cleaning, the lazer went, or the cable is now no good these are the other common causes to consider. Bad cables besides a possibly bad drive are the usual headache. I've been there enough times trying cheap round cables to replace problems seen with soon to go bad flat ribbon!
 
dznutz said:
is the disc bootable?
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yes it is..my concern is that when i try to boot from the windows xp disc to reinstall windows..i cant get it to boot from cdrom..and when i do by inserting the floppy discs i made from microsoft.i am unable to format the drive..however i cannot get to that point anymore because nltdr is missing so the floppys wont work anymore..so now i need to boot from cdrom drive to install windows and i cant
 
When the bios appears it should say "boot menu". Click the key a bunch of times that is desired for the boot menu. When the menu appears just highlight the cd drive and click enter.
 
That will be different on various board if available. On an Asus board that would be simply pressing the F8 key right when the first post screen is seen right next to the press Del now to enter bios setup.

On a board by another manufacturer that could be the press F12 or F1 button instead. Many won't even see that option where a manual setting change has to be made in the boot order while in the bios setup.
 
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