Unable to Boot from CD-Rom

[whittler]

Hi,

I am a newbie. The book which I purchased on Linux presupposes that I would be able to boot from my CD-Rom drive. I can't, despite the fact that my system is relatively new (a 2003 Dell).

I have read your post i found a great program for booting from a cd but cannot figure out how to install that boot manager program (double clicking on it did not seem to work).

Ideally, I would like to be able to boot from CD-Rom as the book suggests without having to use such a utility. Does anyone know any reason why a modern CD-Rom drive would not be able to boot in a standard "off the shelf" PC setup? The drive is a LG GCE-8481B. There's also a DVD drive - Samsung SD-616T.

The end game is to have Linux running alongside a Windows partition.

Thanks

[lakerdonald]

try editing your BIOS to give your CD drive a higher priority than your hard drive

[whittler]

I'm pretty sure I have done that. That is to say, in the option called "boot sequence", I pushed the -/+ keys to make the CD-Rom drive the highest in the list (followed by floppy drive then HDD).

I should have specified that in my original post.

[lakerdonald]

strange. are you sure you burned it right?

[whittler]

Ok. I think there is a problem with the Linux CD's boot mechanism.

I just tried to boot from CD using a Windows XP CD and got a message

press any key to boot from CD - which I presume means it would have booted from that CD if I pressed a key.

When I use the Linux CD, the CD-Rom tries to read the CD, but never gets up a full head of steam and just moves on to booting the HDD.

The CD is not burned, but is a CD which came with the book Introduction to Unix and Linux (a publisher's edition). I can read the contents of the CD from Windows (e.g. My Computer or Explorer). It just seems as though it won't boot. Is there any other way of installing from such a CD? I do have a floppy drive, but have no idea how to make a Linux start-up disk from the CD.

Do I have any options, or will I need to get another copy of Red-Hat?

[lakerdonald]

hmm. do you know what's on the le disc?

[whittler]

I can see all the files on the CD using Windows Explorer.

Basically, there's 3 directories:
- dosutils
- images
- RedHat

A whole bunch of Readme files and release notes plus the following:
- .disc1-i386
- autorun
- boot
- EULA
- gpl
- RPM-GPG-KEY
- TRANS.TBL

[whittler]

Hey all. I have found a workaround which has enabled me to proceed with my installation.

Basically, I went to bootdisk.com and made a Windows 98 boot disk.

Then I booted from that disk which enabled me to access the DVD drive D:\

Then I changed directories at the command prompt to \DOSUTILS and typed AUTOBOOT. This fired the CD up.

I just wanted to let people know that I have resolved the problem and how I went about it.

Thanks

Whittler