Boot from CDROM

Forum: Other Help Topics
Topic: Boot from CDROM
started by: balladofpurpose

Posted by balladofpurpose on Nov. 18 2003,04:21

I have a Pentium I - 150 MHz, 40 MB RAM box cleanly wiped that I want to install damnsmalllinux onto. The CDROM is ATAPI and I've set BIOS to boot from CDROM, but it keeps telling me:

Boot from ATAPI CD-ROM : Failure ...
Missing operating system

What's going on? Please help if you can, and thanks ahead of time for your time and effort.

Posted by balladofpurpose on Nov. 18 2003,04:23

Oh, I forgot; the CDROM that I burned the ISO image onto has no problem because I tried it on my newer Dell box (1.8 GHz, 256 MB RAM) and it worked perfectly.

Posted by KevB on Nov. 18 2003,12:11

You did burn the ISO correctly and not just copy it to the CD?

It looks like your older PC is ignoring the CD and trying to boot from the HD, and so cannot find an OS. Does that CD drive work? Is it connected correctly? Can it read the media your trying to use?

Posted by balladofpurpose on Nov. 18 2003,12:30

Unfortunately, the older box is cleanly wiped, so I can't tell if the CD drive is operational. However, I do know that the CDROM with the operating system image is fully functional because I tested it on my other computer (see post above) and it worked flawlessly.

Posted by enebene on Nov. 18 2003,13:00

In some cases , older cdrom's had problems with cd's that were burned.
There was also a problem with some facturer of cd's because the laser of the old cdrom was to heavy an it looked throug the cd, so it didn't read on it.

perhaps you can try booting a black-cd

Posted by davide on Nov. 18 2003,16:00

test it with another live-distro, a heavier one like knoppix or gnoppix or morphix (or..or..) if it works..or at least if it boots..than you know it's the kind of cd that does matters.
good luck

Posted by cbagger01 on Nov. 18 2003,18:59

Some older drives prefer CD-R disks instead of CD-RW disks or vice-versa.

You should test out your CDROM drive somehow:

Either boot in an alternative OS (Windows/DOS) that contains drivers for your CDROM drive. Stick in a "Normal" CDROM disk (not a home-recorded disk) and see if you can read it. Also, you could try and boot from a floppy disk Linux distro like BASIC LINUX, mount your CDROM drive and see if you can read the files.

If you are unable to read any kind of CD disk, then you have a bad drive. You can also check to see if the DSL liveCD that you burned will work. You can get replacement ATAPI CDROM drives very cheap at most electronics stores. See www.salescircular.com for details.

If you can SEE the DSL CD contents (IE: the Autorun.inf files and the KNOPPIX directory) but you still cannot boot, your next best option is to creat a boot floppy using the instructions on the web site. Then use the boot floppy to launch DSL.

Finally, if you can SEE the DSL CD contents, BUT the boot floppy does not work, then you should copy the contents of the CD over to your hard drive. Be sure to name the folder "C:\KNOPPIX" and not "C:\Knoppix". Then try the boot floppy again and it should boot from the files that are stored on your hard drive.

Good Luck.