As long as the CD is first, that will do.

hi cliff ive set the boot sequence to cd as 1st and left it at that then i save and exit set up and load cd and this appears

no boot device available-
strike f1 to retry boot, f2 for set up utility


when i press f1 it just says same as above

when i press f2 it takes me to set up and cd is still the only drive i have listed as bootable.

hey im learning either way

lol


dellboy

hey ive had a brainwave im going to disable the dvd drive and replace with the cd drive see if this does anything.

ps ive just found the mandriva powerpack 2008 that my mate installed linux with-erm i think its the cd anyway

lol

dellboy

ok that didnt work but ive removed the cd drive which btw i installed and it worked ok.

so ive managed to get to the boot device menu as follows any suggestions which to do

onboard sata hd
onboard or usb cd rom drive

system set up
hard drive diagnostics
boot to utility partition.


ill wait until someone replies before i go any further into the unknown

dellboy

From what you have posted, this looks like system boot options. I'm not sure if this your BIOS or a boot manager that you are talking too.

If it is the BIOS, most of them will tell you at the top of the screen who's BIOS it is, version etc. Normally, you have to use the keyboard arrow keys to navigate along with the enter key to select and change an item. Most BIOS's will show you the navigation information at the bottom of the screen. Does this sound like what you are seeing? If not, then I think you are talking to a boot manage.

The 'boot to utility' option sounds like it may be a restore partition on your hard drive. Some PC makers use this approach, so they can tell you over the phone how to quickly restore the system to original shipped condition.

You get to the BIOS through a hot key,or combination of keys. Please post the make and model of system you have. Most manufacturers have web sites with hardware doc online. A little googling and we can find out exactly how to get into the BIOS.

yes cliff its the bios keyboard arrows to navigate and or change settings etc.

my pc is dont laugh dell dimension 3100 celeron processor

dont know much more about it tbh


thanks cliff youre a star

dellboy

I'm not laughing... If it works, that is all that matters.

Try setting the as the first boot device. Save the setting, put the CD in the drive and try booting. Once you have the correct device, you will see the drive being accessed, as it boots.

nothing just the same if i remember correctly i installed an old cd drive because the dvd drive wouldnt mount when i placed dvd into it so is there any way i can fit the cd drive back in its place and .


i tried this earlier when i disconnected the dvd drive and just fitted the cables onto the cd drive but the pc unit wasnt noticing any drive there.


ive looked into the bios set up and all drive are saying working and switched on if this is any help

dellboy

This sounds like you may have either a bad cable, or the jumpers on the drive are not correct. You need to make sure the power connectors are plugged in also.

Since I have not seen this machine, could you tell me, how many IDE cables you have? One or two?

IDE cables vary, some have the facility to plug in two drives, and some have only one place to plug a drive in. How many hard drives do you have? Right now I know you have at least one HDD, a CD and a DVD.

Usually a single HDD is plugged in on the primary bus, and jumpered as master. The second connection could have another HDD, a CD or DVD. It has to be jumpered as slave. BTW, there is a feature called cable select. Many drives have a CS jumper. In order for that to work, both the cables and the drive must have the feature. The cables are the hard one to check. Some makers mark CS cables, some don't bother, and the only way to know is to meter it out. If in dought, use master and slave jumpers only.

Was the DVD drive working before the HDD started giving you problems? I know you said you could not mount a (data) DVD. That may have been a linux problem, or hardware.

Was the CD drive working? At this point, I would suggest, use as little hardware as possible. Leave the HDD in, and plug the CD or DVD as master, put it on the second IDE bus. Try both drives, and check the jumpers. All we need to recover your data is a booted system, so we can try and sort out the CD DVD drives later.

hi again cliff the jumpers were set up ok along with power cables.


as for ide cables one is connected to the hd one to the dvd drive and a spare which i had used for the cd drive which i had installed jumpered as a slave btw.

the ide cables have csa written on them if this is of any use to you.

no i dont think the dvd was working before i had the hd problem but the cd was working fine.


ive now removed the dvd drive and replaced with the cd drive jumpered as master and connected to the second ide cable effectively the cable which was originally being used by the dell oem dvd drive.

still nowt same story cliff no boot device found...........


still learning btw and can only say thanks whether its sorted or not as ive learnt quite a bit already.

hey this pc lark is so interesting much better than welding


lol

dellboy

Here is a link to what I consider a very good description of IDE cables.

-->http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IDE_Cable

I'm going to have a look through the Dell site to see if I can come up with anything that is stopping you from setting the CD drive up as a boot device.

Just to make sure, is this how you are setting the CD drive to become a boot device? I took this out of the service manual from Dell's web site.

There is a description of the BIOS at this link -->http://support.dell.com/support/edoc...0/en/index.htm

You can view the service manual online.

This is the description they provide for changing the boot device.

Did you have a bootable CD in the drive when you tried it? The book suggest you have to have one in the drive.

Just a quick suggestion, have you confirmed the CD burned correctly and is genuinely bootable? Try setting your working machine to boot from the CD and just check that it works.

If not, use this program to find the md5sum of the Knoppix iso you downloaded, and confirm it matches the string you wrote down earlier as per camorri's instructions. If it doesn't match, you have a corrupt file and will need to download again. If it does, try burning a new cd.

hi ive just started to burn another cd and should i have ticked in the nti box for cd to be bootable

Steady on! Only do it if you've confirmed there was a problem with the first CD, by seeing if your other machine also fails to boot from it.

Probably, although I've never had to set any flags when burning bootable ISOs so I'm not sure what that does.