Booting to CD problem

[mikehende]

Fixing a Gateway laptop and it boots to everything else except for the cd but the cd drive is working perfectly otherwise, any fixes?

[mjc]

I take it you are setting it to boot to CD in the BIOS?

Make/model and how old is the laptop?

It could be that the BIOS will only recognize CDs that stick to strict El Torito standards or something...

[mikehende]

Yes, set the boot order properly

Gateway SOLO 9550

BIOS Version/Date Gateway 29.02, 9/10/2001

Don't know the age of the laptop

[mjc]

Ok, it is at least a post-2000 BIOS, so it should have no problems booting to CD, at least from BIOS considerations. By 2000 most BIOS was able to boot to a CD without worrying if it was made to strict standards or not.

What, exactly, happens when trying to boot? Does the drive even spin up?

[mikehende]

The pc is working fine so is the cd cdrive, only problem is it won't boot from cd but boots fine from either HDD or floppy.

[Sylvander]

Did you try my "Smart Boot Manager" bootable floppy suggestion in post #16 HERE (http://www.pcguide.com/vb/showthread.php?t=52490)?

That should at least tell you that the CD-drive is being seen [by the SBM program] and then able to be booted [or not].

It may not be the most elegant solution, but I find it the best way to boot a CD on a PC that has a FDD [as your Gateway laptop does].

[mikehende]

I am going to try that soon just to get the experience [thanks] but I will still end up with the same problem of the pc itself not booting directly from cd, will let you know how it goes.

[Sylvander]

It's good to have lots of options available [I like it]; it's amazing what you can figure out by seeing how a PC responds in different circumstances. :)

[mikehende]

Got it done, worked like a charm for booting off both EBCD and Knoppix, thank you very much for this help Sylvander!:) Now I have to go figure out why it is not booting from cd, will let you guys know if I find out anything.

[Sylvander]

This suggests something amiss with the BIOS Setup's drive boot menu. :confused:

This is at least the 2nd time I seen someone report this.

Did you "Save and exit Setup" after you made the changes?

[mikehende]

Yes I did.

[Fruss Tray Ted]

Knoppix works but the 'cd' does not? What is this cd? Are you sure it is bootable? Try it in another pc.

[Sylvander]

When mikehende said...
"Now I have to go figure out why it is not booting from cd"
I took it to mean...
Now I have to go figure out why these [or any] bootable CD's in this CD-drive won't boot just as they aught without outside/abnormal assistance.
It should happen successfully for the reason that there is a bootable CD in the CD-drive and the BIOS Setup's boot menu has the CD-drive 1st in the drive boot menu.

[mikehende]

When mikehende said...
"Now I have to go figure out why it is not booting from cd"
I took it to mean...
Now I have to go figure out why these [or any] bootable CD's in this CD-drive won't boot just as they aught without outside/abnormal assistance.
It should happen successfully for the reason that there is a bootable CD in the CD-drive and the BIOS Setup's boot menu has the CD-drive 1st in the drive boot menu.


EXACTLY!!

One person suggested that maybe the the HDD and cd-drive jumpers may not have been set properly but the owner took the laptop back before I can check, seems he is satisfied just to get his laptop working again.

[Fruss Tray Ted]

I wasn't sure if Knoppix was booted to or EBCD was used to run the ROM and boot the Knoppix cd

Sorry, sometimes it's not plain to see

[mikehende]

Problem here with this HP desktop and this is the 2nd pc I have run into this problem, it doesn't allow me to change the boot order. I use the up/down arrows to move up and down through each boot item and this works fine like normal but using either the left/right arrows or +/- keys does not change or move the item up or down, any ideas please?

[Sylvander]

Is "NumLock" off? :)

[mikehende]

num lock off or on makes no difference here, this is the first one where I'm seeing something different, every bios I've seen in the past uses either the + or - or left and right arrows to change the order, this pc's instructions are

select device
[Up/Dn] select
[Return] Boot
[Esc] Cancel

The Up/dn and Return I don't understand?

[Sylvander]

In the Phoenix BIOS's Setup on my Hewlett Packard PC...
To change the arrangement of the drive boot list...

1. I use the up/down arrows to move the highlighting up/down to a different drive in the list.

2. Then I use the +/- keys in the number section of the keyboard [Numlock must be ON for these to work] to move the "selected" [highlighted] drive up [+] or down [-] the list, so as to achieve the arrangement I want [FDD, HDD, CD-drive in my case].

3. Then I "Save and Exit Setup".
This is done by using the right arrow to move the highlighting on the list at the top of the window [I've forgotten the name] to the last item to the right [exit setup?], and save the changes and exit.

[mikehende]

That is exactly what I do most times but it doesn't work on this pc for some reason.

[Fruss Tray Ted]

The up/down you are seeing is in reference to Page Up/Page Down not the arrow keys

[Sylvander]

"it doesn't work on this pc for some reason"
Hmm, strange!
I can't think of anything that would cause that.

Failing CMOS battery? [grabbing at straws]