[cecilep61280]

Elvandil was assisting me with my Acer 5100 computer. We had tried to install XP on a the computer that had a busted cd-drom drive. I have replaced the cd-rom drive and it appears in my BIOS, but it still will not boot from cd (even though i have the order in bios set to read the cd-rom first)...it just goes right to the "windows cannot find such and such folder to repair insert cd and press r". The cd-rom drive spins like its going to go, but it does not load. What can I do to get the cd-rom drive to read the cd instead of going to the windows error first? SHould i use the hitachi drive fitness test to wipe the drive then reinstall windows?

[jasaiyajin]

Have you tried other bootable CDs to make sure your CDROM is functioning correctly? Even if it is, it may be a bad CD. Put your hard drive to the bottom of the boot list in your bios, then save and reboot. I'm assuming you have a network boot option and it will be ahead of your hard drive. Thus, it should display "PXE..." along with various network boot text if it passes the CDROM, the network boot, and to the hard drive.

[cecilep61280]

The cd-rom drive is functioning fine, its from my gateway computer. I baically swaped them out, and the cd-rom drive works flawlessly in my gateway. I even put it back in to make sure i didnt do anything wrong when swapping, and its fine. I don't have a network boot option, but i do have a way to disable network boot. It's not actually in the boot order, its on a different page in the bios. Should I disable it? or enable it?

[cecilep61280]

Also right now its not showing the cd-rom drive in BIOS the first time i put it in there it showed up, and now its just showing IDE:1 and nothing after that.

[jasaiyajin]

It may be a simple connection problem between the hardware. Try unplugging and replugging the CDROM, then check the bios again to make sure it's being recognized. Try it multiple times until it's recognized, then proceed to boot up the CD.

[cecilep61280]

also when i enable the boot from lan it gives me an error about checking cables PXE:media failure and so on, then it goes right to the windows error (that i have to reinstall or repair). The cd-rom drive does spin the cd and sounds as if its going to boot but then stops. Would resetting the cmos battery be any help? I have tried taking it out and putting it back in numerous times, to no availablity.

[cecilep61280]

ok i got it to recognize, windows is loading. thanks

[Rich-M]

Is it on a cable with anything else? If yes then there have to be one component jumpered as master and one as slave or one will not be seen.

[jasaiyajin]

curious how you got it to work, do u mind sharing? O_o

[cecilep61280]

Yeah I basically just messed with it a bit, and found that it wasnt snapped in correctly. At first i pushed it, and it didnt move but I put a little force into it and it snapped in, the only issue is after windows loaded I got a blue screen error. I dunno whats going on with this computer

[jasaiyajin]

My maintenance of an old PC from <insert non-new location here>

Open up case/covers, undust everything, cpu heatsink and psu (with power off of course). Do a comprehensive ram test. When I've dealt with troubleshooting too many hours, I simply start from the beginning, clean install everything from windows to drivers and necessary utilities that require the least amount of space with the most effective track record(eg firewall, antivirus, firefox).

Even if I solve a PC problem, there may be other unseen ones that haven't surfaced yet.

I'm ranting, but the BSoD you received just irks me when you've done so much already.