Bootable CD won't boot?

[Spezi]

I'm trying to do a clean install of XP Pro on a friends computer and it simply refuses to boot from the CD?

It is an Asus P4P800-MX board and of course I went into the BIOS and set it to boot from the DVD drive first.

I've swapped the drive as in the past I've encountered some that act up for some reason but I'm frankly baffled.

With disk in drive what I keep getting is a message that says "Reboot and Select proper boot device or Insert Boot Media in selected Boot device and press a key".

I've also reset the BIOS to default to no avail.

Drives are all recognized in the BIOS.

It has the one optical drive as well as a floppy and a WD Raptor connected via SATA cable.

 

[muckshifter]

Correct cable, master / slave, on IDE ???

Have you got an ordinary CDRom drive you can try ?


Just thinking aloud ...

 

[Spezi]

Correct cable, master / slave, on IDE ???

Have you got an ordinary CDRom drive you can try ?


Just thinking aloud ...

I know the CD I have works but just to be sure I also tried original copies of Win98, WinMe etc and none will boot.

I have tried swapping the optical drive with one that works in my other computer.

Cable is plugged into primary IDE and optical drive is set to Master.

 

[muckshifter]

Reboot and Select proper boot device or Insert Boot Media in selected Boot device and press a key

This a 'classic' error with a HD failure or a floppy disk left in the drive ... so I would say the system (BIOS) is either pointing to the wrong drive, first boot drive, or is skipping it all together.


I thought you would have tried other devices, had to ask anyway.


Try an 'experiment' for me ... remove the power and ribbon cables from the HD & floppy drive and try again.

 

[Spezi]

This a 'classic' error with a HD failure or a floppy disk left in the drive ... so I would say the system (BIOS) is either pointing to the wrong drive, first boot drive, or is skipping it all together.


I thought you would have tried other devices, had to ask anyway.


Try an 'experiment' for me ... remove the power and ribbon cables from the HD & floppy drive and try again.

I did so and it took longer but after a while I got the same message.

 

[muckshifter]

I did so and it took longer but after a while I got the same message.

hmmm, nice one ... I take it you also tried IDE 2

Well, you got me too ... on all my PCs I can skip the BIOS predetermind boot order by pressing an 'F' key ... on the Old Girl it's F8, a bit annoying if you don't hit it at the right moment, but on this PC its F12 ... so I actually have the HD as the first boot device and just press F12 if I wanna try a Linux CD out.

ah, have you tried a Linux CD ... yeah, OK, I'm p1ssing in the wind here.

You got me stumped, apart from a MB failure somewhere, sorry.