CD drive not recognizing boot CDs other than Windows

I'm having a problem with a Dell Inspiron notebook. When I try to boot from a CD to install linux, it just boots from the hard drive (I hit F12 on boot and it gives me the boot menu, so I choose boot from CD, and it still boots from the HDD). It reads normal CDs just fine. It only read my Windows CD, and would boot from it. So I tried reformating my drive, hoping that if it couldn't boot from that, it would boot from one of my CDs, but it gave me an error when I tried to boot after it was formatted. I still was able to boot from the Windows CD only, and reinstall windows. I tried updating the bios, but there were no updates from the version I have now. I have no idea what to do now. Any help would be appreciated.

Question: would this by chance be a burned copy? Are you able to see any files inside Windows with that CD?

From what you’re describing you have tried other CDs and they will boot and read but this is the only one. Is that correct? If that is the case it sounds like you have a bad CD on your hands.

Try to get another copy.

Also just to let you know the boot menu options have nothing to do with the OS. Windows does not have any control of that area of your system. So formatting and reinstalling windows would not help in this case.

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Originally Posted by devildell

Question: would this by chance be a burned copy? Are you able to see any files inside Windows with that CD?

From what you’re describing you have tried other CDs and they will boot and read but this is the only one. Is that correct? If that is the case it sounds like you have a bad CD on your hands.

Try to get another copy.

Also just to let you know the boot menu options have nothing to do with the OS. Windows does not have any control of that area of your system. So formatting and reinstalling windows would not help in this case.

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Yes, its burned. No, I can't see files inside the CD on that computer, but I can on my dell desktop computer.

Any Linux distro i tried wouldn't boot, and I tried Partition Logic, that didn't work either, but for some reason the Windows XP cd that came with my dell booted fine.

I realized that windows doesn't have control of that area, but I wasn't sure if the computer was still booting to the HD before the CD, i wasn't sure if it was a BIOS problem or something. (I did go onto the boot list and change the order, that didn't work either) It didn't really bother me to reformat, cause the person i'm doing this for wanted it reformatted anyway.

Good Evening,

I experienced similar problems with another brand of laptop. Originally before I repartitioned it, there were 3 partitions. The first partition of about 30mb was essential, shared several critical instructions with the BIOS (including the drivers for the CD/DVD player) and also contained some other, utilities etc. With it gone my laptop would not boot from anything other than the HDD. I had to restore the partition and obtain the drivers and files from the manufacture’s site and use the ole command line to install them. Once they were back in place, I could boot from any Linux Installation CD and it now has only Linux installed. I must say it's kinda funny to see the Compaq Logo pop up and shortly there after SUSE loads up :)

Don’t know if that helps, but check to see if that’s the case on the Dell.

cheers

What FS was the partition? and what drivers did you install? Would these be installable in windows? (i forget how to get to DOS in XP other than in safe mode, which is still in windows, but im not sure if that matters, and im real slow at it) Ill try installing Dell CD drive drivers now and see what comes up...

Well,

1. Clean the CD. Long strokes from the centre to the rim and not circular in motion.

2. Is the CD actually bootable?......... try it on another box?

3. Clean your CD drive.

4. Check that the media is compatible.............if it was burned at a higher speed than your drive, that might be the problem?

:)

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Originally Posted by nihil

Well,

1. Clean the CD. Long strokes from the centre to the rim and not circular in motion.

2. Is the CD actually bootable?......... try it on another box?

3. Clean your CD drive.

4. Check that the media is compatible.............if it was burned at a higher speed than your drive, that might be the problem?

:)

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1. The CD is fairly clean.
2. Yea, I tried it (them) on my other Dell.
3. how do you go about doing that without scratching the lazer?
4. The laptop drive is 24x, and I think the computer I burned it on was able to burn at a higher speed, so I'll burn another copy.

I burned a new CD at 12x and the laptop still didn't read it in windows.

Quote:

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3. how do you go about doing that without scratching the lazer?

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Actually, they sell a CD for that. But, I don't believe that is the problem, and I'm not sure myself what the problem is. Have you tried contacting Dell and getting their 2 cents?

I actually thought about calling them, but I wasn't sure if they'd help with that type of problem.

Are you sure you burned the disk properly and did not just copy the .iso to the disk?

Hye metguru,

The cd that you are trying to intall from, is that cd burned from the ISO image of the linux distro or an cd dump of that distro?

If you have copied the linux distro cd on to your harddisk and then burned the cd then it will not boot from that cd because when the system boots from any drive it look for the boot sector information in the first tack of the boot media so if the cd dumped and then burned it will not work.

yea, I tried it on my desktop and it worked fine, and the burn speed is lower than the drive can read, so it can't be the CD.

Relyt sounds like his answer might work, but I don't know how to check the HD partitions, as I have a bootable Partition Logic CD, but that doesn't work on this laptop.

OK, no one seemed to reply to the post, lol, so I read over it again, and forgot to call dell. I called them, after about 45 min, a person picks up the phone, obviously not from the US. I explained my situation, he told me to hold, so he could 'research' for the answer...8 minutes later, all he was able to do was explain to me how to boot from a CD. When I told him I knew how to do this, he had me hold for another 5 minutes, and then he told me to hold the function key while pressing the power button. (then he hung up on me) This loaded a diagnostics program by dell. btw, has anyone ever seen this program? (it was totally new to me) I had the program test the CD drive. It told me the CD in the drive had no data (it was the Ubuntu CD), so I had to put another one in to continue. Obviously no errors came up after the CD was switched, because it passed the problem by doing that.

...RelyT's explaination is seeming to become more and more logical to me...

anyway, I was thinking, is it possible to boot from a network? I've read about this, but have never done it, and have no idea how hard this is to do.

...the problem is it's an Inspiron. One of my buds has one that only take Win98 or ME. Just won't take W2K or XP. It's a PIII unit with plenty of RAM. Inspiron: they don't come much flakier.

Good Day Mate,

brokencrow has a good point there. To elaborate a little based upon suppositions.... :D ...anyway. During the initial boot of that box it went to the first partition, that was the 0-partition (39MB of Dell Utilities and files). After agreeing to this and that and pressing enter...from that point on it would boot to Windows via the 1-partition which contained the MBR and all was well. I would suppose that all those instructions and the contents of 0-partition went gonzo when you formated the bugger. There is some discussion regarding the value of that partition after the laptop's first boot, however I’d skip the debate and simply restore that partition and it’s files and then give it a go again, making sure I didn’t make it go bye-bye again.

Anyway here’s a link that describes the process and the critical files necessary to get the bugger back up. (Paragraph 6 – 7 addresses which files etc.)

http://www.goodells.net/dellutility/recreate.htm

but the Dell utility partition is what I booted from when I hit the Function + Power, isn't it? So wouldn't that mean that its already there?