CD Drive Won't Read

Hellbreather

Hellbreather

New Member
Hey guys,

I tried to install Windows & 3 versions of Linux and neither will read the disc, it says that the disc is in the drive and finds the drive just when I tried to start to install things the boot loader always freezes, as in, when I install Windows it wont go past formatting before freezing. Mandriva Linux won't load the bootstrap, Damn Small Linux stops after the init process and SUSE Linux nevers goes past the boot screen.

No idea whats wrong changed the IDE Cable, changed disk drives and even changed the IDE port I am using. Any ideas?

Thanks.
Hellbreather.
 
I hope you trying to install Windows onto the first primary partition and not elsewhere. Windows requires the mbr seen there. Are you using GParted to create the different types of partitions(NTFS/VFat-root, swap)? You can't go over four primary partitions on the drive. SUSe and Mandriva will need to share the swap partition. That's three used there. Are you using some type of universal boot loader? And what "disk" are you referring to? Windows installation, Linux installation, boot loader on cd?
 
You can install XP on a secondary disc, but the MBR master boot record will still be located on the primary one, so it will not boot without the primary drive.
 
The boot record for any version of Windows goes into the first section of the main drive that has an existing partition that favors that version. The one thing that made XP different from the previous versions was the ability to install it's mbr on Fat16 and Fat32 partitions as well as NTFS types.

XP however would be the first one you would want to install for this reason however. Linux can go on any part of a drive as well as second or third drives where you simply adjust the Grub or Lilo boot loader. A universal boot loader goes one step further where you simply select the OS to load no matter where it is since the boot loader installs that information automatically when you have it set everything up for you.

I ran one here for a period where you simply clicked on the Linux or MS button to see that version load up. Unfortunately I haven't been able to relocate that one as well as some others. That was the only freeware version to come across while DAS U-Boot is another type. Fortunately there are tutorials on multibooting Windows and Linux together you can review like the one seen at http://www.howtoforge.com/windows_linux_dual_boot
 
I really dont think this is an installion problem considering it won't even get to the bit where the OS starts to install.
 
Have you tried running any diagnostic tools like memtest to see if there are any faults with the hardwares installed? A bad Windows disk or bad burns of Linux disks are another thing to consider if the media used was...? Bad burns will see stalls right off.
 
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