booting from cd impossible

tmoonen · October 15, 2011, 4:39pm

much esteemed helping hand,

i’ve recently installed OpenSuse 11.40 (Dutch/english) on my pretty old ASUS laptop.

I didn’t have much time so i’m afraid i didn’t start the install too well informed.- i figured if too many things didn’t work i’d go for a reinstall of either ubuntu or WinXP, to be able to put this old Laptop to use.

Thanks for helping out (or trying) with the following problems:

WLAN doensn’t work… a lack of firmware apparently. I nosed/asked around and got a tip to find out the exact chipset of the card here. Thanks, Texas James!
I’m working on that. If i can’t get it to work, my backup stategy of simply installing another OS is blocked…

**it seems the bootsection of my ASUS is changed since my OpenSuse Installation… it’s not reading the WinXP installation DVDs i tried.

Can anyone tell me how to go about activating CD/DVD boot capability again?**

Many thanks,
Tom

jdmcdaniel3 · October 15, 2011, 4:50pm

The ability to boot from a DVD or CD is controlled by the BIOS. Basically, the CD or DVD player must be set as the first boot device, before any internal or external hard drive. Many BIOS’ will boot from a DVD or CD if it finds no bootable hard drive, even if it is not set to boot first. However, once a bootable hard drive is present, the CD or DVD is not used unless it setup as first in your BIOS. In a case where it is confirmed that the CD or DVD is set to boot first in the BIOS but does not boot a disk, then there must be something wrong with either the boot disk or the CD or DVD drive. Remember that dust in a drive and finger prints on a disk can stop it from booting. Keep your drive and disks clean.

Thank You,

martin_helm · October 15, 2011, 5:17pm

Many PCs and laptops have a hot key you can press during the bios starts to
select from which device you want to boot (sometimes F12 for example, I do
not know which one it is for your model).
Did you check and try that?

tmoonen · October 16, 2011, 11:50pm

Thanks Martin, and thanks again, James!

i tried some F buttons and the del. button after reading Martins reply, and How to Set BIOS to Boot from CDROM - www.hiren.info, the F8 didn’t work. I got into the boot setup and changed the boot priorty (CD/DVD was indeed behind HDD) so now i’ll be able to install something else if i want to Amazing though, losing the WinXP that was on the system must have changed the bios a tad, since i didn’t have trouble to boot from a cd before.
I’ll now try to import firmware and see if i’ll get the old thing to finally work completely.

Thanks again!,

Tom

jdmcdaniel3 · October 17, 2011, 12:30am

Thanks Martin, and thanks again, James!

i tried some F buttons and the del. button after reading Martins reply, and How to Set BIOS to Boot from CDROM - www.hiren.info, the F8 didn’t work. I got into the boot setup and changed the boot priorty (CD/DVD was indeed behind HDD) so now i’ll be able to install something else if i want to Amazing though, losing the WinXP that was on the system must have changed the bios a tad, since i didn’t have trouble to boot from a cd before.
I’ll now try to import firmware and see if i’ll get the old thing to finally work completely.

Thanks again!,

Tom

Happy to help tmoonen and good to hear you were able to set your BIOS to boot your CD/DVD drive before your hard disk. Just let us know if you need any other assistance.

Thank You,