Asus P4PE - Failing to Boot from CD

[Tresdrez]

I just set up a new system with an Asus P4PE motherboard, Crucial PC 2700 DDR (2x512), P4 2.4Ghz 533 (no OC), Maxtor 20GB HDD, Pioneer 16x DVD, Plextor 16/10/40A CD-RW.

For whatever reason I can not get it to boot from the CD, which means I cannot install Windows XP on it, making it a very expensive paper weight.

Any suggestions?

 

[lobadobadingdong]

I have had some problems booting to cd's with the plextor burners, have you tried the dvd player, I have a 16xDVD slot feed from pioneer and it works great. also check your bios settings that the boot order has the option to boot to the cd enabled and in a proper location. don't forget to press the space bar a few times as the computer is looking to boot to the xp cd, my machine is so fast I don't see the screen it just goes blank then says no os found.

 

[ChampionAtTufshop]

Originally posted by: lobadobadingdong
I have had some problems booting to cd's with the plextor burners, have you tried the dvd player, I have a 16xDVD slot feed from pioneer and it works great. also check your bios settings that the boot order has the option to boot to the cd enabled and in a proper location. don't forget to press the space bar a few times as the computer is looking to boot to the xp cd, my machine is so fast I don't see the screen it just goes blank then says no os found.

windows xp isnt THAT heavy

anyways make sure you push space bar, i cant tellyou how important that is (or any button)

it usually says something along the lines of "boot from cd" and then dots "." appear...this is when you push any button

 

[DAPUNISHER]

In the bios under the boot menu disable the HDD as a boot device under option 2 and make certain that the ATAPI drive is correctly displayed under option 3, then if it boots from CD make sure that the first time that XP reboots the machine during the install that you go into the bios and re-enable the HDD as a boot device.

 

[Tresdrez]

I figured it out in about 5 minutes after I got home from work. Guess I just needed some time to think about it. Really the only problem is that ASUS' BIOS are setup differently from what I am used to. Always used Abit Motherboards up until now. Just had to change one setting

Thanks for the help.

 

[Mahone]

Just curious...what did you change to fix it?

 

[Tresdrez]

On Abit MBs any drive you select as a boot drive will be tried, evidentally for Asus it only does the first one. So I had to hit the plus sign a couple times to move the CD to the head of the group. Once XP was installed I went back in and moved it back to its rightful spot. Not sure why they list 4 devices if it will only boot off one anyway.

 

[corkyg]

Originally posted by: Tresdrez
Not sure why they list 4 devices if it will only boot off one anyway.

Because it gives you a sequence. I set floppy as boot device 1, CD as boot device 2, LS-120 as boot device 3 and HDD as 4. This is with the P4PE. That is the way Asus has always handled boot sequences in Award BIOS. If no disk is in the floppy, then it looks at the CD - and if no boot disk is there, it looks at the LS-120, and if nothing is there it boots the HDD. It's all very logical and gives the user a lot of control and choice. And, you can set that any way you choose in the BIOS. For fastest boot, just use the HDD and don't use the others. It's the user's call.

 

[Tresdrez]

But then logically it would have just tried the CD-ROM at the 3rd device, since the first two didn't contain the OS. But instead it just told me there was no OS. It only worked when I chose the CD-ROM as the first device. Hence why I think having 4 listed is a waste, since it didn't try to boot all of them, only the first ones.