Cd+ram

The Astroman

The Astroman

Active Member
I recently tried booting off an XP CD to install it on a PC. The PC didn't detect the CD and booted on the HDD with Windows 98 installed. So I though it could be the IDE ribbon cable might be unplugged, which would explain why the PC couldn't detect the CD. I popped open the PC, but the cable was connected so I disconnected it, blew a bit on it, and then plugged it back in. Following that, I turned my PC on, but 2 problems occured:

1) The PC still wasn't detecting the CD
2) The PC had detected a change in the quantity of RAM (it went down from 512M to 209M I think), but I didn't touch the RAM...

EDIT: RAM PROBLEM IS FIXED
 
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I'm guessing you had the Boot Order in BIOS set to 1)CDROM 2)HDD
Have you tried removing any of the ram sticks and booting with just one in.... bad memory causes all kinds of probs
 
Yeah, boot order was:

CD
Floppy
Net
HDD

Why would I try booting with just one? I need to get both, so I'd first like to fix what's not working with the RAM, and then fix the CD problem. I'll try taking the RAM out and putting it back in. Report in 10 minutes.
 
have you checked that the cd is actually a bootable one... got another pc you can try it in?
When 98 is running, can you view the cd?
 
hmm...are there any extra options in the BIOS for that cd drive, or does it just say AUTO?
The only other thing i could sugest is that the drive may be dead. You could try connecting up your drive to it.

BTW. what is the IDE configuration? What is the HDD & CDrom on (IDE0/1 Primary/Secondary) and what jumper setting are they on?(Cable select/Master/slave)
 
OK.. So CD is on auto in BIOS.

HDD = master 1
CD = master 2

And I don't think the drive is dead cause I've used it before.
 
Sorry but its got me stumped. the only other thing i could suggest is try using a floppy boot disk with CDROM support then once you have a DOS prompt try navigating to the CDROM drive and running setup.exe
 
I just realised this is the wrong section; we are talking about a desktop PC.

Anyways, still not working. Any other suggestions?
 
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