My Dell Inspiron 8500 isn't booting from the Mandrake boot CD (#1).

I downloaded all three and burned them off. They have autorun (in windows) features to make a menu pop up.

I don't have a Floppy Drive, though I *DO* have a USB Flash Memory Device.

I'm not sure why the cd won't boot. The bios is set up to CD, then USB, then Hard Drive. I book WinXP, Win2k and Norton just fine from CD.

Maybe there are some files missing for it to boot from?

It doesn't help that the Dell burning Software (Roxio) doesn't work (app won't start, I've tried uninstalling and reinstalling). I had to use WinISO to extract the disk and then burn the contents (XP has burning software built in, but not .ISO or .Bin support). Could that be the problem?

Mandrake comes with a boot disk creator, but like most boot disk creators they're pretty F'd up. They require a Floppy Disk drive, even though I could probobly set it up on a CD or my USB Flash Card.

So, any tips on how to install? or verification that it was my bad in extracting the image and burning that way?

Thanks very much

can only speak from my own experience but
when i started i had a similar cd problem
which i got round by using Nero to burn the images with
(easy cd creator couldn't cope-seemingly) (it may have been my ignorance)

yeah. if your burner software doesn't support .iso then it's a good bet that you cd's aren't burned correctly. take salparadise's advice and download/install nero.

I had Nero, but never owned it. Its a GREAT program. Just my 30 day 'trials' never expired 'cuz I had to keep reinstalling windows.

I'll give that try, thanks guys