CD Boot Problems

[brad.mugleston at comcast.net]

On Mon, 6 Feb 2006, Rick Stevens wrote:

> On Fri, 2006-02-03 at 21:53 -0700, brad.mugleston at comcast.net wrote:
> > I've got FC4 running on my notebook - against my best wishes I
> > need to install XP on it for my daughter - she has a class that
> > requires Windows to run a program from the class.  I don't have a
> > windows machine in the house (I do have a bunch of Linux machines
> > though).
> >
> > Well, I happen to have XP, came with a computer.  The notebook
> > will no longer boot off a CD - could it be GRUB?  The BIOS is
> > setup to boot from the CD but no go.  Or maybe my XP disk is bad
> > (after all it is windows).
>
> No, the ability to boot from CD is in the BIOS.  If the CD media itself
> is bad, that may prevent a boot.  The CD drive itself may also be bad
> (or the lens dirty).  Try to boot from CD again and see if the machine
> even accesses the CD.  If it does, try a different piece of media (even
> the first Fedora CD or the rescue CD) and see if that boots.  If that
> also fails, try getting a CD drive cleaner disk and use it.  See if
> that helps.
>
> Also keep in mind that if it's an older CD drive and you're trying to
> read a blue-green CDR on it, it may not work because the laser used on
> older CD drives was 690nM and not the more current 630nM or 650nM
> wavelength and can't read the blue-green media (yes, I know that's a bit
> obscure, but...)
>
Thanks, I messed around with the CD, cleaned it up and got it to
boot - went into one setup and it froze up so either the CD is
bad or it doesn't like the computer.  OH, well, I guess I get to
keep it running under Linux.

Thanks for all the help.

Brad