Burned ISO's will not boot
 

Hi all,

I'm running Mandrake 9.1 and have an ACER 10x4x32 CDRW. Trying to burn CD's from ISO images. Using K3B with cdrdao. The driver is generic-mmc. It burns fine, no errors, and I can view the contents of the CD after it's burned on my Linux box. The problem is that when I try to boot a different PC with that CD it doesn't work. I can hear the CD drives having a hard time (a lot of clicking and they don't spin up the disk.)

I tried the CD's in a variety of CD drives and the same thing happens. The only one drive that it works on is the CDRW that burned it. Burning other things like music or data CD's works just fine.

Any ideas?

Thanks

did you burn it so it can boot?, also in my expereince some drive cant boot certian cd's (like they will only boot cd-r and nothing else (suprising cuse my dell cp can boot cd-r and cd-rw and its older then the ones iv seen boot cd-r only)

I used the "Write ISO image" function of K3b. I'm not sure if there is another option I need to select to make it bootable (my understanding was that you just burn the ISO and if it was setup to be bootable then that's what you get as a result.)

The problem is that I can't even read the damn CDR in a Windows PC (no problem on my linux box.) The CD-ROM just keeps on clicking, as if it can't focus the laser on the track. My CDRW drive is capable of writing at 10x, but I used 4x to wirte the ISO's.

Like I said before, I'm using the generic-mmc driver (tried the generic-mmc-raw as well.) I checked the /usr/share/cdrdao/drivers file and some of the drives listed have additional options listed after the generic-mmc part. Is there anything I should add to the drivers file to make this work? Is there a site somewhere that will list all the available options you can use in the drivers file?

I wonder if the write session is closed?

Would I be able to browse the contents of the CDR if it weren't? (I can browse it in Linux - the machine with the burner. That is the only CD device I have in that box.)

um, yeah you would. and then you wouldnt be able to browse it on a maching a.without a burner, b. a machine not using the correct fs driver (cant remember what it is called)

Hmmm... Well, I think I remember, while setting up the burn session in K3b, the option was to close session, but leave the disc open for more sessions. I'll try to burn the ISO's and close the disc; perhaps that'll make a difference.

Thanks.

hope it makes a difference, as i think it will

Got it all solved. Unchecked the "Disk at Once" option and the CDR boots up just fine.

Thanks for your help ezra143!

no prob, glad it worked.