My BIOS is inaccessible. Now, is it possible to make it detect bootable cds at startup by changing the drive's cable connections inside the PC? I have to find out to successfully install RH9.

No. The BIOS will consider CDs seperately from hard-disks when booting up.

You may be able to make a boot floppy and do either a CD install or an install from the network.

With some versions of Windows, it's also possible to press (I think) F9 at the right point during bootup to select the media you'd like to boot from.

You can also wipe the BIOS password (and reset the BIOS completely!) by shorting out and discharging the battery on the motherboard (there's usually a jumper you can close to do this). Then you can get into the BIOS to make changes. You may then need to replace the battery…

If the BIOS is inaccessible just because you don't know how to get into it (it may not tell you), Try pressing Escape, Delete or F2 (or other function keys) during the memory-test.

Hope that's of some help,

— Robert J. Lee

I would question this - most likely you just need to press a particular key during the first few seconds of powering up. If you have a banner screen displayed while the PC is starting up, try pressing Escape, or F2, or F12, etc, as rjlee has indicated. Hopefully that will let you get into BIOS. -- J.W.

My BIOS is definitely inaccessible but my computer 2's CD-ROM used to detect CDs at boot time until some technicians changed the data and power cables attached at the back of it. Therefore, I think that that was due to the cable connections. Does anyone can tell how to change it back?

It probably won't make a difference, but you can try making the CD-ROM drive your primary master and your hard drive the primary slave (the end of the cable connects to the master and the middle to the slave) or the secondary master (connect it to IDE 2 or Secondary IDE as labelled on the motherboard). The power cables make no difference. As pointed out by the others, I'm surprised you cannot access the BIOS by pressing a key. BTW, what kind of computer (Generic, Dell, HP, etc.) and BIOS (Award, Phoenix, etc.)/motherboard do you have?

Please further explain making my CD-ROM as the primary master device. My computer is Compaq 5166MMX 2100 DDM. I dunno what my BIOS name is since it doesnt show up at startup except the Compaq word with white bakground and hourglass at the bottom right of the screen. After this, it directly boots Windows.

I thought so. Compaq's never show the correct function key to press to go to the BIOS. Typically, you have to press F12 before the Compaq sign comes on (just keep pressing F12 from the time you turn on your computer). If it's different, Compaq's briefly flash the correct key to press for about 2 seconds maximum before booting into the OS. Repeat using the correct function key. Password protected or not, you should be able to get into the BIOS ans see the settings.

Most motherboards have two IDE channels: a primary IDE and a secondary IDE. Each IDE channel can hold a maximum of 2 IDE devices - a master device and a slave device. In addition to setting the jumpers on a device as a master or a slave, the device in most cases has to be connected in a certain manner - master is at the end of an IDE cable, and slave at the middle of an IDE cable. Technically, it should not make any difference where a device is connected. You can boot off a primary or secondary, master or slave device - as long as its correctly specified in the BIOS. If it's not, then the computer boots from Primary Master followed by P. Slave, Secondary Master and S. Slave. But, it should not come to that. Just get get a bootdisk.img file from a redhat mirror, say, http://mirror.linux.duke.edu/pub/red...s/i386/images/

Make a bootable floppy (use rawrite or some such utlility - under the folder /i386/dosutils in the above mentioned link) , and once you are in the installer, choose your cdrom (/dev/cdrom) as your installation source. It's much simpler. Good luck!

i think compaq is f10.

do you mean cincindie that i only have to interchange the ide (if thats what you call it) cables of the hard disk and the cd-rom? f10 and f12 dont work.

anaconda crashes whenever booted from a floppy.

Yes. But, as I've said before, I'm fairly sure that it won't work. If not, I'll try to think of something else.

how come it wont work? i think that what youve suggested was the one done by the technicians.

As I mentioned before, it depends on the BIOS settings and not on the physical connections. However, if the CMOS is cleared, then it reverts to the default (Primary IDE followed by Secondary IDE, etc.).

please elaborate the phrase "if your CMOS is cleared." What happens when CMOS is cleared?

The BIOS settings are stored in your CMOS (Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor - a chip on you rmotherboard). If you clear your CMOS by shorting a couple of pins on your motherboard (the manual should explain this or, if you don't have one, the compaq/hp website will), all your BIOS settings are reset to their defaults, including your hard drive as the startup disk.