# Laptop Will Not Boot From Cd



## janice. (Jul 29, 2008)

Im working on this Dell Inspiron 8600. I cannot get it to boot from the cd drive. I have tried several diff cds. I have swapped out the cd drive. The bios is set to boot from cdrom first.

It reads the cdrom from the desktop. I can install windows from the desktop. But I cannot reformat and install new without booting from the cd. The only thing I can do from the desktop is install an os on top of the existing os. Which means the closest I can get to a clean install is to delete as much as I can before installing from the desktop.

I have also tried booting from an external cdrom via the usb ports but the usb ports are corrupt too.

Is there anything else I can do to make this thing format the C: drive from the desktop?


----------



## joeten (Dec 4, 2008)

Hi try F2 on boot then set the first boot device in the bios to cd\dvd drive save and exit F10 then try booting from the cd\dvd drive


----------



## janice. (Jul 29, 2008)

janice. said:


> Im working on this Dell Inspiron 8600. I cannot get it to boot from the cd drive. I have tried several diff cds. I have swapped out the cd drive. _*The bios is set to boot from cdrom first.*_


Mmm... thanks but I did that as I posted above ...


----------



## Madcatz (Apr 15, 2008)

Have you fried pressing F12 at the dell logo screen to pull up the boot menu and selecting the cd drive to boot from?

If you have and that still didn't work, then you still have a few options of doing a clean install. First is you can try using a windows 98 floppy boot disc that has cd rom support. Boot to a USB floppy drive and then you can run setup on the cd drive from the DOS prompt. There are other ways, but very very few people have the equipment needed to do a network install (RIS image).


----------



## janice. (Jul 29, 2008)

Thanks Madcatz. Yes Ive tried F8, F10, F12 on boot up to no avail.

Theres no floppy drive on this Inspiron 8600 laptop.

Maybe the mobo ide channel/port is bad.


----------



## Madcatz (Apr 15, 2008)

well, can't really be bad if it works just fine in windows. Usually I see it on the way around, lol, boots fine, but doesn't work in windows.

Few possibilites are that, there may be a setting in the BIOS that disables booting from the drive. You could go into the BIOS and reset it to defaults, save and exit. Then try pressing F12 on startup.

But like you said, no floppy drive, so you would need a USB floppy drive. Those can usually be picked up at a best buy or place like that for $20 or $30 or ordered from newegg.

Last thing is you can try and clean the drive. They get dirty and start having problems reading discs, sometimes its only certain types of discs, sometimes it's all discs.

Other thing I'd ask you to check is look at the disc your trying to boot too, is it a dvd or cd? + R or -R, or RW, or DL (dual layer)?

That laptop may be old enough to where it won't see certain types of discs. You might be booting from a DVD and it may not be a DVD-ROM drive, only a cd-rom drive. I'm guessing that this might not be a problem since you said it works in windows, I'm just saying since I'm not sure if you tried reading the same discs you are trying to boot from in windows. Deffinately check that one out.


----------



## joeten (Dec 4, 2008)

Hi one last thought try delete on boot


----------



## janice. (Jul 29, 2008)

Thanks guys. Im not having any trouble getting into the bios as I said in the first post, Ive set the cdrom to boot first.

The cdrom is a cd/dvdrw drive. Ive tried booting from several os disks with the same result -- nada. These same disks self exe just fine on the desktop. 

As Ive said before the usb ports dont work either or Id try booting from my usb cdrom.

I was hoping Id missed something. Oh well... thats life sometimes. Thanx again.


----------



## Madcatz (Apr 15, 2008)

when it comes to booting from USB, quite often a computer will not boot from a USB cd-rom drive but they will boot from a USB floppy drive...actually I have yet to find a laptop that won't boot from a USB floppy. 

Have you tried setting the BIOS back to defaults as I suggested in my previous post?


----------



## joeten (Dec 4, 2008)

Beat me to it Madcatz


----------

