Fedora Hijacking Boot Priority
 

Hey all. I'm fairly new to Linux, and I decided for my first computer to run Linux full time, I would use Fedora since it seemed to meet my requirements and run faster than Ubuntu on the old-ish computer I was installing on (a vpr Matrix 1620 circa 2002)

Anyway, Fedora was fine the first day but the next day it no longer would work with my wireless internet adapter. It would just endless try to connect to my home network, never actually finishing the process.

So, I've decided to try Ubuntu, instead of trying to fix the problem, since I am new to Linux and I hear that Ubuntu is very user friendly.

However, I've encountered a problem. I've burned a Live CD of Ubuntu 10.04 and set my BIOS boot setting to put priority to my CD drive in the boot order. This is CD is definitely bootable, as I have tested it on other computers. When I turn on the computer, first I get the BIOS boot logo, then it goes right into Fedora, rather than whatever is in the CD drive. This computer has been able to boot off of CDs in the past.

Any help would be appreciated greatly.

Are you sure you saved your changes in the BIOS? If you did and it still skips the CD drive then the problem is not with Fedora or Ubuntu. I would expect it is either your BIOS or your CD Drive.

What happens when you try to boot some other [bootable] CD from the same drive?

--- rod.

With some CDs, it does work. For example, I found this weird restore CD and that worked fine.

Since the problem seems to exist with other CDs, and the hardware in question is of an older vintage, I would speculate that the CD reader is either starting to fail, or is sensitive to the nature of the CDs, possibly a result of the way they were created. AS much as we would like to think otherwise, there are differences in the quality of both the media and the burner, and sometimes the result is just what you are seeing. It might work for you if you could re-burn the CD, especially on different brand of media and/or different burner.

--- rod.

Since the problem seems to exist with other CDs, and the hardware in question is of an older vintage, I would speculate that the CD reader is either starting to fail, or is sensitive to the nature of the CDs, possibly a result of the way they were created. AS much as we would like to think otherwise, there are differences in the quality of both the media and the burner, and sometimes the result is just what you are seeing. It might work for you if you could re-burn the CD, especially on different brand of media and/or different burner.

--- rod.

You might also try a slow burn speed. I've found 8x to work with most everything.

First I'll try at a slower speed but if that fails, the computer I was burning it on has two CD/DVD burners so I'll try the other.