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System refuses to boot from cd/dvd/usb
SleePy:
I probably should ask elsewhere, but figure we may have a few smart cookies here.
I'm trying to boot off a cd on my desktop. The system refuses to do this. So I checked out the bios and cd was first in the boot order, followed by usb and finally hard drive. So I changed the order and removed the harddrive from any boot order. It still booted into the OS rather than the CD. Tried many different boot cds (win7 64, win7 86, UBCD, and a ubuntu disk I had). I know this drive works as when the OS is loaded I can read and write with the disk drive.
I have SATA and not IDE, but I have it a swap around with my CD now plugged in where the HD was and that didn't work. I tried to unplug the HD and it just fails to boot completely (asking to hit CTRL+ALT+DEL). So I made a image of one of my boot cds (the win7 recovery one) and imaged it onto a usb drive. It doesn't even want to boot off that. The HD and CD run off the same chain for power (ie my CD is plugged into P10 and my HD is on P11). So I know it has power to it at the time bios is booting.
My BIOS has a option to specify 3 boot options and then allow for it to detect others. I disabled that and set all 3 boot options to the cd drive (which it does detect and name correctly in BIOS).
I'm at a loss here as to why the system refuses to boot to anything other than the disc drive and no amount of BIOS setting changes (or resetting to defaults) seems to make it work. I know this would commonly point out a disk drive failure, but the drive works just fine when the system is fully booted up. The drive doesn't even spin up when I start the system, saying to me that the bios is ignoring it for whatever reason.
K@:
Is the CDROM on the second IDE interface?
If so, it's possible that the BIOS won't boot from it. I've worked on mobos and I've found that with some, it would only boot from the CDROM drive if it was connected to the primary IDE connector.
Also, check the connection to the mobo. If the connection isn't perfect, the BIOS won't see it, even if the OS can.
SleePy:
there is no ide. Its sata. I checked that and even swapped the connectors just for the lulz.
K@:
Got another drive to try, in case that one's buggered?
The BIOS notices that kinda thing before the OS will.
CoreISP:
You removed the hdd and it boots in to the OS anyway...? riiiggght o0
Well, you sure the CD is bootable?
You got a boot menu rather than bios you can pick from?
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