Boot from DVD drive

[Alan T]

I had installed Vista once but forgot how to install booting from floppy or
DVD drive.
Now my harddisk cannot be boot up. I think I may need to re-install Vista.
I set from the BIOS to boot from CDROM drive, then put the Vista DVD into
the drive and restart the PC.
It did not boot from the DVD drive, may be my DVD drive problem. So now I
cannot install Vista.
Any way I can get around that?

 

[Rick Rogers]

Hi Alan,

What happens when you set the BIOS to boot from the optical drive?
What happens when you attempt to boot the existing installation?
What error messages are you seeing?

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org
My thoughts http://rick-mvp.blogspot.com

 

[Joe Morris]

I had installed Vista once but forgot how to install booting from floppy or
DVD drive.
Now my harddisk cannot be boot up. I think I may need to re-install Vista.
I set from the BIOS to boot from CDROM drive, then put the Vista DVD into
the drive and restart the PC.
It did not boot from the DVD drive, may be my DVD drive problem. So now I
cannot install Vista.
Any way I can get around that?

Are you certain that it didn't boot the DVD? When the Vista CD/DVD is
booted on a system that has a bootable hard disk it displays a one-line
message "Press any key to boot from CD or DVD"; if you don't respond within
a few seconds the code from the CD/DVD passes control to the boot process on
the hard disk and the computer acts as if it had never booted the DVD.

Another possibility is that you've got hardware problems that cause the hard
disk boot failure (you gave no description of the symptoms so this may or
may not apply to you...but depending on your system configuration a failure
of a disk or a controller could prevent anything from booting). Do you have
any other bootable optical media to try?

Joe Morris

 

[Alan T]

Hi,
My Vista harddisk did not get boot up, complained of the system32\config not
exist. Forget about this issue, what I need to do is re-installation of
Vista.

I have already setup the boot priority to the CDROM (note, it says CDROM but
not DVD drive)
When the BIOS come up, the line at the bottom says
DEL to setup, F8 to set up the boot sequence

If I did nothing, the error will be
NON SYSTEM DISK, PLEASE INSERT SYSTEM DISK

If I selected F8, it goes into the boot menu allowing me to select the book
disk:
Removable disk
Harddisk 1
Harddisk 2
....etc

So my system cannot boot from my Vista DVD.

I recall I can boot up from my XP CD when I install XP, so it seems can boot
up from CD only.

Also I cannot remember in the first time when I installed Vista not sure I
use Win98 startup disk to boot into DOS then run setup.exe from the Vista
DVD.

I think I may need to create a Win98 boot disk.

 

[Paul Randall]

I have already setup the boot priority to the CDROM (note, it says CDROM
but not DVD drive)

Is your CDRom player capable of reading DVDs?

-Paul Randall

 

[Saucy]

< chop >

The BIOS gives out a few messages e.g. the Del or F8 message, ignore those
... look for when the system first accesses the CD/DVD-ROM drive you will see
a specific message saying:

Press any key to boot from CD or DVD..

when you see that message at the top of the screen hit any of the keyboard's
key. You have a just few seconds to do so after the message appears. Think
about it.

Saucy

 

[John Barnes]

As stated, WAIT for POST to complete when it will provide the message below
from the DVD. You are too anxious.

 

[andy]

Hi,
My Vista harddisk did not get boot up, complained of the system32\config not
exist. Forget about this issue, what I need to do is re-installation of
Vista.

I have already setup the boot priority to the CDROM (note, it says CDROM but
not DVD drive)
When the BIOS come up, the line at the bottom says
DEL to setup, F8 to set up the boot sequence

What motherboard do you have?

F8 is a one time override of the boot sequence that is set in BIOS
setup. Press DEL, instead, to get into BIOS setup, and go to the
screen that allows you to set the boot sequence.

If I did nothing, the error will be
NON SYSTEM DISK, PLEASE INSERT SYSTEM DISK

The BIOS is booting from a device that is not bootable.

 

[Alan T]

Hi,

I have already set the boot sequence to the CDROM drive in the BIOS.
If I do nothing in the POST, the screen will show
Boot failure, please insert system disk...

If I press F8 into the boot sequence, there is no CDROM drive or DVD drive
for me to select. It has only the 'Removable disk', and also the other
existing harddisk to select.

Yes, my drive is LG DVD writable drive of course can read DVD.

 

[John Barnes]

If your BIOS doesn't show your drive, have you tried to reset the data
cable. Since you can insert the DVD, the power cable must be okay.

 

[Alan T]

Sorry, I do not understand what do you meant by reset the data cable? How do
I reset the data cable? The DVD drive data cable is that you refer to?

 

[John Barnes]

The cable that caries the data. Unplug it at the motherboard and plug in
again, do the same at the DVD drive. It would usually be a flat 80 wire
cable (also may be defective - broken) for an IDE drive or a small (1/2
inch) flat cable that is often slightly rounded for SATA. The SATA
especially can work loose. It is also possible that the drive is defective.
I am sure you have checked, but in the old days, you would get this message
when you left a non bootable floppy in the floppy drive and the floppy was
in the boot sequence.

 

[Alan T]

Hi,

I think my DVD drive works properly because I can read DVD disk and CD from
this DVD drive.

 

[John Barnes]

Then you are either missing the message to 'press any key to boot from CD'
or you have a problem with the DVD that makes it not bootable.

 

[Alan T]

Actually I cannot find the message 'Press any key to boot from CD'.
How do I know my Vista DVD is or is not bootable?

 

[dennis@home]

Actually I cannot find the message 'Press any key to boot from CD'.
How do I know my Vista DVD is or is not bootable?

Try it in another machine?

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

Actually I cannot find the message 'Press any key to boot from CD'.
How do I know my Vista DVD is or is not bootable?

All Vista DVDs are bootable. If you can't boot from yours, either the
boot order is not set correctly, there's something wrong with your DVD
drive, or there's something wrong with your DVD.

 

[Alan T]

Hi,

Finally I fixed the problem:
I goto BIOS, found the CD Drive is LG DVD drive was there already. Anyway I
moved the cursor to there and pressed ENTER, select it again. Exit and
reboot.
Now can boot from DVD as mentioned "Press any key to boot from CD or DVD
drive"

I don't know why I needed to re-select the DVD drive again in the BIOS.

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

Hi,

Finally I fixed the problem:
I goto BIOS, found the CD Drive is LG DVD drive was there already. Anyway I
moved the cursor to there and pressed ENTER, select it again. Exit and
reboot.
Now can boot from DVD as mentioned "Press any key to boot from CD or DVD
drive"

I don't know why I needed to re-select the DVD drive again in the BIOS.

I'm not sure I understand exactly what you're saying, but I'm glad to
hear the problem is fixed.

 

[John Barnes]

You, too.

Hi,

Finally I fixed the problem:
I goto BIOS, found the CD Drive is LG DVD drive was there already. Anyway
I
moved the cursor to there and pressed ENTER, select it again. Exit and
reboot.
Now can boot from DVD as mentioned "Press any key to boot from CD or DVD
drive"

I don't know why I needed to re-select the DVD drive again in the BIOS.

I'm not sure I understand exactly what you're saying, but I'm glad to
hear the problem is fixed.