please help
 

I have tried several distros of linux ,and have completly gotten rid of the "other " one...problem is ; I installed sabayon , I am wishing to keep trying other distros ,but cannot boot from cd or dvd rom with sabayon installed ,dvd is first boot device in cmos ,but does not try to boot since installing sabayon ,any suggestions????please

is the disc or the cdrom drive damaged?

Hopefully you don't still have the Sabayon live cd in the ROM drive...

But do you see anything on your display before it jumps in to Sabayon?

If not try tapping the arrow keys to disrupt the boot sequence.

Also disable any BIOS splash screens that hide console text from view.

Thanx guys for feedback ,no disk is not damaged ,no ,I am trying to boot into Ark ,so it is not the live cd ,this is the first linux distro I have had any problems with ,it loads grub loader ,then into sabayo n ,but will not boot from cd ,yes dvd is first boot ,and I can run cds and dvd while in sabayon ,but cannot install from boot...Thanx

are you sure there is no finger prints on it?, sometimes one finger print will stop it from booting

a good hint, next time post the problem in the topic. a topic stating "need help" tell's us nothing. and the best and smartest will not open sutch topic...

so, for your own good, do not make a topic title like this, and post the problem.
more like : cannot boot from cd while sabayo is installed.

you would get more (usefull) reply's...

allso, did you try this with other bootcd's that worked in the past?

If you already have windows installed on it, you can use the application unetbootin to begin the installation procedure for many popular distributions:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNetbootin

If the DVD/CD drive is set at the first boot device, it doesn't matter what is on the hard drive, or even if there is a hard drive attached to the machine - the machine will boot from the DVD/CD if there is bootable media in the drive at boot time. This is handled entirely by the BIOS.

Please check your BIOS settings.

still cannot boot from cd/dvd
 

Okay so now ,I have removed hard drive to check bios ,yes I can boot from cd/dvd with no hard drive ,so now I know it is a problem with sabayons grub boot loader ...can anyone help ,or do I buy a new hard drive to solve this problem ,that no one seems to have any real answers for????

try taking the hdd completely out of the boot sequence. Just disable it in the bios. On some PCs bootable optical media takes too long to load the boot strap code, and no matter what you do, it always goes to the hdd. This problem is usually the bootable disk itself, or the way the drives are configured in the machine. Even if you use SATA, optical drives still go on ide 1, which is the second ide interface. You never mix one ide channel by putting a hdd and optical drive together on one cable.

Some linux distros make it difficult to install other distros. I've had it where I needed to wipe the drive with zeroes before debian would install over SuSE, but I guess after SuSE got wiped, I wasn't really installing over it. I would seriously have to see the machine in action, because this problem is sticky.

Another thing that can do this is installing linux over Windows. Windows is there, it's just not accessible to the user. If you want to solve this, there is a way thatusually works: Make a bootable DOS diskette: Get a dos boot disk from bootdisk.com. It will be an .exe file. You can use unzip to unzip it, because it's a self extracting zip file, and then write the image file to a diskette with dd.

Or, on practically ever distro install cd there are dos boot images you can dd to a diskette like so:

dd if=imagefile.img of=/dev/fd0

Put the bios for your bios, from the motherboard manufacturer's site, on the floppy, and the bios update utility. Turn the machine off. Clear the bios by shorting the proper jumper, or taking out the battery. Put everything back. Boot without the hdd connected until the machine doesn't do anything, or asks for media. Leave the hdd disconnected, and boot again until the machine does nothing, or asks for media.

Boot the machine a third time, and when it asks for media, put the floppy in, and hit enter. Write the bios on the floppy over the existing bios using the bios update utility from you motherboard manufacturer's web site. Boot with the new bios, but no boot meda (i.e. hdd disconnected).

Put everything the way it was (i.e. connect hdd), put the bootable cd in the drive really fast, as the machine is powered up. You've got to be fast. Now it should boot from tehe CD. And don't tell anyone how you fixed it.