Insert Bootable Media..........
 

Not strictly a Linux Question, but I'm sure those will come once Ive got this problem fixed! ;) If this is in the wrong place feel free to move.

Just bulit myself a new machine;

Shuutle SN85G4v2
AMD 64 3200+
1GB PC3200
120GB SAT HDD
etc.....

Nothing anstalled as yet, totally bare drive. Insert my SUSE 9.1 disk 1 and power up. CPU and memory detected fine, HDD detected fine, CD drive detected fine. But when it comes to boot from CD it gives me a PXE 61 error. " Please Check cables and Insert Bootable media" or some such.

Now I understand from other threads here that this means its trying to boot from a network? Funny thing is that Ive set all boot options 1st 2nd and 3rd to only boot from the CD.

I've tried known good CD drives and IDE cables with no luck. I've even disabled almost everything I can in the BIOS in order to narrow it down but no change. Have tried 4 different bootable Linux disks as well as win XP and Win 2K.

Any ideas? I'm dying to get my new machine up and running.

Thanks.

How are the jumpers on the cd drive set? What's the hard drive set to and what's the cd drive set to? Does the BIOS see the cd?

CD is set to primary master at the moment, although Ive also tried it as Slave and cable select with no effect.

Hard drice is SATA so doesn't have any jumpers, (I think?) Both drives are detected by the BIOS.

Weird. If it's trying PXE, I would guess that it can't detect the cd drive - but from what you have said, it is at least powered. Have you tried a different cd, even (gasp) a Windows cd, just to make sure it's not the media?

Yup, have tried several different Linux distros as well as Win XP and Win 2k, all do the same thing. The light on the CD flashes, I can hear it spinning up but then it says "Install Bootable Media". Even tried taking another CD drive from a different machine and using that. Have tried in all:

6 bootabel disks, all known good.
3 Different CD drives.
2 different cables.
Every BIOS setting under the sun.
Removing various components from the machine such as wirels module, one of the DIMMs, HDD just to see if any conflicts show up.

Still no luck.

Really don't want to have to resort to £1 per min tech support line, but I'm getting close!!

Have you tried reseating the drive ribbon cables? And checking that they are plugged into the correct ports on the mobo? A friend of mine once said that every time he builds a new pc he always has to spend time restting jumpers and moving cables on the mobo.

I've tripple checked all the cables, then checked again, does the same thing with the CD on IDE 1 or 2, and with the HDD on SATA1 or SATA2.

I've even taken the new CD drive from the new machine into an older rig and the drive works fine.

That is really very weird. Unfortunately, I'm all out of ideas - unless you could try removing all your pci cards and floppy and seeing if that has any effect.....

Hopefully someone else will be along with ideas. BTW, have you tried your cd drive in another pc?

Yup, tried all that. CD works fine in another machine. The machine has no floppy or PCI cards in it, but everything else that can be swapped has been swapped.

Anyone got any experience of an install from scratch on an nforce 3 board?