wont boot from cd drive

Press any key during boot and try the "Check CD for defects" option. Maybe the CD is scratched or became defective afterwards. These things happen.

The CD doesn't show up at all during the boot and once Ubuntu is loaded I can access the CD without problem I just can't boot off of it.

Sorry for my mistake! :)

Another idea is to try to boot it using a Virtualization environment like VirtualBox, VMWare or VirtualPC. Create a Virtual Machine using one of theses tools and try to boot it using the CD. If it does not work then the CD is probably defective and you need to burn a new one.

If you didn't change hardware or BIOS configuration of your PC since first installation, the issue can only be related to CD itself or to the CD drive to have dust.

I installed virtualbox and tried to install Slackware and Ubuntu, which I both burned using the CD/DVD drive on my computer but was met with the same error. I was starting to think I burned it to a disk wrong but when I put the install disc in my sisters computer it booted from the disc without any problems. I am so confused. The disc is good, but the CD drive that read other CDs and burned the install disc is bad? This isn't making any sense to me, could it be something in the BIOS, something besides setting the computer to boot from the CD/DVD drive first? If this helps in the BIOS there's a section called "Main" and you can enable/disable quiet boot, network boot, f12 boot menu and d2d recovery. You can also set SATA mode to either AHCI or IDE. Boot priority is set up to 1. USB CD/DVD ROM, 2. IDEO : Hitachi, 3. IDE1 : TSSTcorp, 4. USB FDD, 5. Network boot, 6. USB HDD. That's all the information that I have, if anything comes to mind anything at all please let me know. Thanks.

If it does not work on VBox then there is indeed a problem with the CD/DVD. So there is nothing you can do in your BIOS. What software do you use for burning? You also need to check the md5sum of the downloaded iso file if it matches the one given on the Ubuntu site.

I'm going to try to find an external disc drive so I can confirm it's not my disc drive. I guess until then I'm going to put this on hold. It might be a couple of days but I'll let you know what happens.

Ok didn't get an external yet but I loaded Mandriva onto my gig stick and tried to boot from the USB port. I was met with failure leading me to believe that it's not a hardware issue and that it could be a bug problem with Ubuntu. Any thoughts or opinions anyone?

HI

Please can you let us know the CPU speed and ram size? Are they under 1GHz and 1Gb ? Also can you change the boot order in the bios from

"Boot priority is set up to 1. USB CD/DVD ROM, 2. IDEO : Hitachi, 3. IDE1 : TSSTcorp, 4. USB FDD, 5. Network boot, 6. USB HDD."

to make the "IDEO: Hitachi" the last option on the list? I have a feeling that what the bios calls the Hitachi is actually your hard-drive? The TSST is usually a cd/dvd-drive and the USB HDD is the usb-stick. The FDD is usually a floppy-disk-drive. Can you get the 3 Usb & the TSST higher on the list?
Regards from
Tom :)

Hi again :)

In addition to my last post i just realised it might help to see if you can make a Cd of SliTaz and see if you can boot up with that
http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=slitaz
http://www.slitaz.org/en/get/
Their LiveCd stable version is the best one to go for to check a few things here.

It might be worth quickly checking through this guide
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BurningIsoHowto
to see if there is anything unexpected in there. Note that the cheapest Cds you can get are better for this purpose than more expensive kinds and any Cd is better than a dvd for this.

Also can you check the md5sums on the Cds?
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/HowToMD5SUM
I have a feeling this md5sum might be unexpectedly wrong for the Ubuntu and Mandriva Cds but SliTaz is only a 30Mb download so it is less likely to go wrong.

Again, don't worry if you can't do all these things at once! Just let us know how it goes with the first couple of things you try.
Good luck and regards from
Tom :)

Thanks and regards from
Tom :)

The cpu is an AMD v120 2.2ghz, 2gb ddr3 memory, 250gb HD. I'm going to change my boot order to what you suggest. Thanks.

Hi :)

Ok, i am just posting this as a comment to hopefully keep your thread "Open" rather than "Answered". It sounds as tho your machine is well over min.spec. :) Changing the boot-order is the next most sensible thing to look at. Just getting that TSST near the top of the list should help

Regards from
Tom :)

Ha, it still marked the thread as "Answered", sorry :(
Regards from
Tom :)

TSST did the trick, but It still confuses me. Why didn't it work with cd/dvd as #1. I guess it's not that important, I have just installed Slackware and I think I'm in for a ride. Don't supose you know any good websites for information on new users to it, other than the obvious? Thanks Tom.

Hi Remingtone :)

Congrats and welcome into linux-land!

Slackware is one of the hardest and toughest to figure out. Better to start with an "entry level" distro such as Ubuntu, Mandriva, openSUSE or something, perhaps even Fedora would be easier than pure Slackware! Alternatively you could try one of the Slackware family of distros such as Vector, Zenwalk, Absolute, Slax, Wolvix (if it hasn't vanished).

All the gnu&linux distros run much the same, especially on the command-line but there are about 8 main families that use different package names and slightly different ways for some things. Once you have got used to doing a few sundry and fairly complex things in them you will find Slackware easier later.

Since you have found Slackware i would guess that you have found DistroWatch? If not it is worth exploring!
http://wwwdistrowatch.com
Down the right-hand-side is a list of the top 100 desktop distros. Click on the one you want to find out about and it gives you a special page that gives a decent break-down of soem usefulinfo, such as where their user/help forums are. For example
http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=slackware
http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=zenwalk
http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=mandriva
or the number 1 most popular Ubuntu
http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=ubuntu
Ubuntu is the one i would really recommend starting with but many of us have a dual-boot (or multi-boot) system either sharing a separate /home partition or keeping the user data and settings separate from each other. All share the same swap partition (hopefully, unless it's installed wrongly somehow).

The cd/dvd that you had as number 1 was the usb-cd/dvd-drive, not the internal one. Or else it was a 'generic' one and the posh one you are using tells the bios more about it's real identity. Sometimes the Usb-cd-drive turns out to be an external hard-drive so sometimes just mixing up the order to something fairly random does the trick. Obviously it is more important to have fixed the problem rather than knowing the answer, except in linux-land where we are often far more interested in the whys because it might lead to something more interesting in the future :)

Hopefully something there helped!
Good luck and congrats from
Tom :)

Just a suggestion.

Maybe the state bit on your hard disk is not right. If it is not 0, such as 1 or 3, then the system will not boot up from CD/DVD even the CD/DVD is set as the first boot item.

If so, just press anykey when boot up to escape from boot up from HDD.

Also you can set the state bit as default with state.exe /boot /c in Dos environment, or statewin.exe /boot /c in Windows command line.

Sorry for do not know how to change the state bit in Linux.

Just a suggestion.

Wow!

@ CoolEagel
Is that bit/byte likely to get reset if the bios gets reset? Popping the mbord battery out for 30secs or so fixes quite a few things but messes up any overclocking. Do you think it might work for this?

I think trying sliTaz might tell us quite a lot. It often does work on damaged hardware but wouldn't work if that bit/byte thing is an issue. Not definite proof if it doesn't work but if it does work then it would help us!

Regards from
Tom :)