I have a promedion notebook, that is about 3 years old. It is a handy 14" machine, I manly use it to keep in touch with home, when I am away. This works fine, but lately I am using more and more pdf files with all kind of info.

The less cd's I have to take with me the better, so I decided to change the cdrom (Teac cd 224E) against a DVD (Toshiba SD - C21612). On a DVD you can put 6 or 7 cd's so I could take a lot of info with me and have yet only a view DVD's. This works fine, I can read the stuff and the DVD works without any problems.

Recently I tried to start a CD from the DVD drive but ............... this doesn't work. In the bios ( Mobile Pro Bios ver 1.01 from System Soft corp) you have the possibility to make the boot order for 3 devices. The c drive, the cdr and the flop. If I put the cdr first it does not boot - cdrive is booting- (it does with the old cd drive). If I put it second same thing.

So can anyone tell me is this a bios related problem, or is there a way to overcome this.

CloudBuilder

is this a problem with a single CD ?
or is no CD readable at all ?

some drives have troubles reading certain CDs (especially CDRs)

From my experiences with desktops this will probably be a bios related problem, the only recommendation I can make is that you go to your laptops manufacturer's website and try to flash the bios this may help, however I am not sure. Something else that could be the problem is that the drive really doesn't like the CD you're putting in it. I had a drive like this once, it would take all CD's but would never take a norton internet security cd yet it worked on pretty much any other drive and computer. If you solve the problem be sure to tell us about it!

I think you have to call your notebook manufacture to find out if there are any DVD drives for your notebook model. If there is no DVD drives for your notebook model that are compatible, you can buy a few 2.5 inch (6.35 cm) external hard drives. The capacity ranges from 20 gigabytes to 60 gigabytes. They run off the USB power supply so you do not have to bring a battery a long just for the external hard drive. If you want to bring a lot more storage than a few 60 gigabyte hard drives, you can go for the 3.5 inch (8.89 cm) hard drives. They range from 20 gigabytes to over 300 gigabytes but they do not run off of the USB power supply. You need an extra power supply just for the 3.5 inch hard drives.

You can use a boot loader like either GRUB or LILO. Then set it up, so you can pick the DVD drive. A lot people that has old systems that can not boot to the CD-ROM or DVD-ROM have to do this.

According to the manual it could have a cdr but no model is given.

I have such a HD and I can live with it. This would be the second best option if nothing works out.

I use GRUB and your last suggestion was also mine. I spend some time in Googling around (to prevent to invent the wheel for the second time) but I couldn't find a solution until know. The Grub manual gives some info about different devices but I didn't read everything thoroughly, which I will do first the next days.

If you have any knowledge over how to do this, I am obliged if you would share it.

CloudBuilder

Thanks everybody, I didn't check if this was the only boot cd that didn't work, so I will do this first.

I'll try this first and if it doesn't help I'll try grub.

I made a request for a new bios, but my hope on that is minimal. You can't flash it, but it would be replaceable.

The external disk is a last option. But I could also live with that. The DVD is working, the only problem is, it does not boot (can be a problem by a reinstall or something like that)

I'll give it a try and will report the results.

Bye, bye,

CloudBuilder

I followed the suggestion to take other CD's. I took only DVD's and CD's that were not burned by me, but factory made.

First, I tried another boot-able DVD............... did n't work.

Then I tried another boot able CD and YES ................ this one works (Suse startup CD for 9.1).

So it seems that my Toshiba has a special appetite....... and does not like my CD brand .

I will do some more testing.

Thanks for the support.

CloudBuilder