First off, I'm new to this site, but I've been using linux for about 5
years. I've installed lots of systems, but never run into this
particular issue before.

I guess it's not strictly a linux question, more a PC hardware one.
The symptom is that I cannot boot the machine from a CDROM
other than WinXP. The message I get when it goes to boot from
CD is:


Reading boot...
1. FD 2.88MB System-Type(0F)
Bad magic


This happens no matter whether I try booting from a Debian CD
(which is what I want to install), a Redhat CD or an OpenBSD
CD. Same result for both CDRs and factory CDs. So far the only
CD the machine will boot from is the Windows XP CD.

My system is a brand-new box I built:
AMD Athlon XP 2500+
Gigabyte GA-7N400 Pro2 (nforce2 Ultra400 chipset), latest BIOS
512MB DDR RAM
Sony CDU5211 CDROM
Sony CRX300E/B2 DVDROM/CDRW
Maxtor 30GB drive with Windows XP SP1
Western Digital 20GB drive intended for Debian

It does not matter which CD drive I use, the message is the same.

I've googled for the BIOS error message but turned up nothing.
Like I said, I've never seen anything like this before. I don't see
any relevant settings in the BIOS-- everything is set to auto.

Maybe I'm missing something obvious, but so far no lightning
bolts have struck.

Anyone else done installs with the nforce2 Ultra400 chipset?

Thanks,
varmint

The only other time I have seen something like this was when my instructor back in my MCSE class bought a real cheap spindle of no-name CD-Rs and tried to make us each copies of Server 2003 RC1. He burned about 6 of these things, and not one of them would boot. They all gave a similar error message to the one that you are receiving now. So this begs the question.....did you burn your linux install CD's using cheap CD blanks?

The only other thing that I can think is that the BIOS is not reporting the floppy drive correctly, and that possibly this is the problem. You said you already checked all of your BIOS settings... so I could be wrong.

slight

Never mind... I just re-read your post and saw that you said this happened with burned and factory media... so that blows my theory out of the water.

Still, the error focuses on the floppy drive. I would concentrate here. Is the FD set as a 2.88 MB in the BIOS? Does the floppy work correctly under WinXP?

slight

The "FD" in the BIOS message refers to the emulated 2.88MB boot block on the CD. I think it's also known as an El Torito bootable CD. There is no floppy drive in this machine.

The reason for that is twofold: 1) I hate floppies. They're always getting corrupted and are a poor medium for installing a modern OS. 2) In order to boot a kernel with support for my hardware, I have to make a custom installation disc. If I were using floppies, I'd need 4-5 disks to hold all the modules. With a custom Debian "netinst" ISO, I can include my custom kernel as well as all the modules on one CD. So it's much simpler.

Well, it seemed simple until I tried to boot from the CD...

BTW, I tried my custom Debian CD in another machine and it boots properly, so I know that CD is good.

WAG: try un-plugging and re-plugging your ide and power cables to the drives. Perhaps it's a dirty connection.

Have you cleaned the laser lens on the drive lately?

Hmmmm..... I am at a loss then.

If you had a floppy I'd tell you to dl slack 9.0 and boot off of the floppy... but you don't so I can't.

I think it is possible to mount a ISO image to your HD, but I am not sure if it is then possible to boot from this image, but it may be possible.

thats all I can think of.

slight

fancypiper: this is a brand-new machine, so the CDROM lenses had better darn well be clean.

As for the data and power connection, all the drives work flawlessly under XP. If there was a problem there, I would have seen it as I have been gaming on this box pretty steadily since I built it last weekend.

Possible solution.... found some stuff on Google (mainly old mailing lists) that mentioned the 'bad magic' message on boot. This error appears to be cause by the CD label. Specifically, some systems spit out this message if they encounter a bootable CD without anything in the disk label (or a corrupt label). What does this mean? I have no idea, but I am going to take a shot in the dark and say maybe all of your linux install media is without a label (anythings possible). The fix, make a new install CD and make sure to give it a label. I know this sounds silly, but I found 5 or 6 different threads off of mailing lists and forums and such and they all mentioned that as the solution. Hey, it's worth a shot... eh?

slight

This could very well be a stupid ploy microsoft did. You see, with a certain laptop (Cant remember name), It would not start off with any other CD but XP. No dual boots or Linux on its own could be installed. Sony may have done the same kind of thing to that CD Drive.

Damn, that would be sinister! I guess I could slap an older non-Sony CDROM in there to see if that's it.

Thanks!