Hi and welcome. Put the cdrom first in the bios setup.

Then, you need to be sure that the cd you are trying to boot to, is in fact, bootable.

 

Hi,
I have already tried placing the CD-ROM first in the boot order and it still won't boot. How do I know if the CD-ROM drive I have is non-bootable?

Thanks

 

Sorry, I mis-read that last part....

Yes, the CD I have is bootable. It boots fine in my other 2 PC's.

Thanks

 

Does your drive read other CDs?

 

Yes, it does.

The CD-ROM is acting like it will boot certain discs and not others. I don't know why. It will boot and install my Red Hat Fedora and MandrakeLinux discs just fine. However, when I try to install Windows XP, it's a different story. XP setup will format my hard-drive as normal, then it will start to load the Windows XP setup files as normal, then, after it reboots the system, I get the following message:

Verifying DMI Pool Data.......
Boot from CD:
Press any key to boot from CD...... Error loading operating system_


And that's where I'm at at this point.

I would like to install Windows XP on this machine, not Linux. Ironically, it seems to install Linux just fine, but it seems like it is balking at installing Windows for some reason....
To add insult to inujury, I have six Windows XP discs (3 Home editions and 3 Pro editions- all copies of my orignal two because I wear out my originals (and eventually the copies as well) from re-installing Windows so much- (ask Mr. Gates about why! :-( ), and I get the same error message on them all. Both of my other PC's like these worn XP copies and originals just fine.

Scott

 

The problem you describe in your last post does not indicate a problem with the CD-ROM drive or the boot capability of the Windows XP disk. You're receiving that message because you still have the bootable Windows XP CD in the drive. After the initial phase of the installation, the computer does not need to boot from the CD-ROM, however, because the disk is in the drive, the system is asking you if you want to boot from it. Since you don't, ignore this message.

The problem is with the message "Error loading operating system". This would indicate a problem with the hard drive, other hardware, or the Windows XP disk (the contents or integrity, not whether it's bootable).

 

Did this particular XP cd come as an OEM with another computer?

Also, on the reboot, you don't want to boot from the cd again, you want to boot from the hard drive and continue with Windows setup.