Have an old eMax machine with WinMe. It came with one of those recovery CDs that restores Me from a separate partition. Doesn't seem to be a boot order setting in the BIOS, so I guess it was designed to just use the recovery disk. Is there a way to bypass this, so I can boot from say the live disk of Kubuntu or Mepis? Thanks.

If you mean Windows Me by Winme it should boot up from you,re hard drive
Chechk you,re BIOS settings
You only need the recovery cd when there is something wrong
There mostly *.cab on the hard drive to rinstall WInMe
Another thing is you,re MBR in place
Windows Me still works with DOS under it
To reinstall WINDOWS ME totally you need the install cd if do you have
And you also need the license number
have the install cd the command fdisk MBR put the MBR Back in place.
The command sys c: make the hard drive boot able again and you can reinstall Windoes ME
In the past I use Windows ME and suse 7.3
Suse grub boot both Os

Hope fully this will help you

Boy, that answer makes no sense to me. I've already said it boots to WinMe. I'm trying to figure out how to allow me to boot from another install disk like WinXP or Linux.

So, you're saying that you have a recovery partition on your hard drive, that is only accessible from the recovery CD that came with the computer? I have seen recovery partitions that include diagnostic utilities, but never which include a full Windows install.

Can you clarify your issue? Are you unable to boot to Windows?
You can CD boot with your recovery CD, but not a LiveCD?

This type of situation sounds like it is a BIOS config problem. In the case that your computer could not find a boot sector on the hard drive, it will search for the next boot device in the list. It may be that your boot order is set to Floppy, Hard drive, CDROM (or similar). You might want to move the CDROM to the top of the order. Even so, this should not prevent your computer from booting a LiveCD.

If there is no boot order in the BIOS, it may use a boot menu. When you see the POST screen, as well as the option to hit a key for setup (BIOS) is there another option shown?