# BIOS Not Recognizing Bootable CD



## imbzy (Jul 5, 2007)

Hey everyone,

My current dilemma involves my computer simply not recognizing any bootable CD. I've set CDROM as first priority in my BIOS, but what's more is that on startup I can hit a key for a "boot menu," and every time I try to boot the CDROM I receive an error that states that it is in fact not a bootable CDROM.

The CD isn't faulty. I've tried using this disc on other computers without any problems.

Am I going to need to update my BIOS (and how would I do this? Do MoBo companies have a download on their website from which I can burn the image onto a disc?)? Is there something faulty in the MoBo itself?

Any help is appreciated.

*EDIT -- My System*:
CPU - DualCore AMD Athlon 64 X2, 2200 MHz 4200+
System Memory - 2048 MB
BIOS Type - Award (11/23/05)
Video Card - NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GT

Motherboard is "Unknown" according to Everest, and being this is a Gateway (that I've upgraded) computer I'm assuming they make their own.


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## manic (Aug 2, 2005)

Find out what model number of gateway from gateway via website.
Then find and install mobo drivers, if you have the original discs that came
with the gateway the drivers will be there.


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## imbzy (Jul 5, 2007)

manic said:


> Find out what model number of gateway from gateway via website.
> Then find and install mobo drivers, if you have the original discs that came
> with the gateway the drivers will be there.


Alright, so I found two driver updates:

BIOS
Driver update listed under MoBo Drivers as AMD Processor

I first tried the BIOS update, but it had me burn itself onto a disc and have it boot on startup - the very problem I'm having, thus I could not even get this to install. Though I've heard of ways you can boot from a USB Drive, and I think I have a spare 20 MB junk drive somewhere (as the BIOS update itself is only ~900kb).

I got the AMD Driver update to install easily, but it did not affect anything.

EDIT: I'm looking at my "Restore System" disc, which states that it can install drivers/reinstall WinXP. However it also only functions as a bootable disc, so I'm doubting that this will boot on restart. Trying now.

EDIT2: Didn't work, which scares me. Only about six or so months ago I used the recovery disk to reformat.


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## manic (Aug 2, 2005)

Are jumper settings correct on cdrom drive.


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## imbzy (Jul 5, 2007)

manic said:


> Are jumper settings correct on cdrom drive.


As you can probably tell I'm not exactly a wiz with computer hardware, but how would I go about checking these settings? What is their function?

EDIT: It's notable that I have two CDROM Drives and both share the same problem.


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## manic (Aug 2, 2005)

In the back of these drives you will see jumpers, one should be set to 
master and one should be set to slave. When you set to boot order
in bios make sure you are putting the cd in the right drive. If you have
not replaced a cdrom drive chances are good that the jumpers are ok.
Just sounds to me like something simple is going on here, a bios setting,
a jumper setting or placing disc in wrong cd rom drive.


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## imbzy (Jul 5, 2007)

Speaking completely from memory, I think I might've found the problem:


```
IDE Channel 0 Master [None]
```
Which was listed in the BIOS. The slave (IDE Channel 0 Slave ...), however, had something listed other than None. Could this be it?


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## manic (Aug 2, 2005)

The hdd set to master on the primary ide could be named 0, 
and the cdrom drives set to 1 on the secondary ide cable.
But the master on 0 should be the harddrive.


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## mikey09 (Feb 2, 2008)

i know this is a little late but hope i can still help to anyone who looks at this 

in my past experience i have found that the Nvidia geforce 7600gt among other cards will not allow certain types of bios to boot from disks why this is i have no idea and this causes me major problems because evertime you want to boot to disk you need to switch back to onboard graphics and remove the graphics card. 
if anyone can answer why it does this and how to correct it please help thanx


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