DVD Drive Not Bootable - Why?

[geezer]

I am trying to get my neighbor's Windows 2000 machine running, and
decided to try to boot a disk from his DVD drive. I have tried
setting his BIOS to boot from the drive - and nothing works. In fact,
when I make the drive the ONLY bootable drive, the machine fails to
boot at all. I have tried several disks, each of which is bootable
on other machines.

So - I am left thinking - what could be set (or not set) that would
keep the drive from being bootable? It is Secondary Master by the way
- should be germain.

Thanks

Geezer

 

[Guest]

Does the DVD drive read CDs? or only DVDs.....

If you do have a DVD/CD combo drive and you said you have tried "several"
discs...are they different discs? or copies of the same disk...perhaps the CD
is not bootable, if all else fails, and there is an existing OS, maybe create
a small partition and copy the i386 folder there, then run the setup from
folder on the other partition

 

[geezer]

Does the DVD drive read CDs? or only DVDs.....

If you do have a DVD/CD combo drive and you said you have tried "several"
discs...are they different discs? or copies of the same disk...perhaps the CD
is not bootable, if all else fails, and there is an existing OS, maybe create
a small partition and copy the i386 folder there, then run the setup from
folder on the other partition

I have concluded it is the BIOS. I have tried a second drive with
same result. Both drives work in another machine. Both drives read
CDs and DVDs.

Neither drive shows up in the BIOS page two, but both show in BIOS
page one and in W2000's 'My Computer' and will execute the content of
data disks.

Not sure what to do now. I can't find any BIOS setting to change to
make the drives bootable. If I set the BIOS to only have a CDROM
drive and set that as the only boot drive, I get a boot error.

Thanks

G

 

[Guest]

Dont get mad at me, but have you reset the BIOS to its default settings?

 

[geezer]

Dont get mad at me, but have you reset the BIOS to its default settings?

Damn! I wished I had thought of that! It booted! Thanks a meg
Now - what I am really up to here is to reinstall his W2000 system
hoping thereby to eliminate a repetitive error message saying his
system is corrupt. Let us pray....

Geezer