Boot from CD...old Latitude laptop?

[KyleGates]

Ok, I give up, I can't seem to get this laptop to boot from the modular CD-Drive. Its an old 466 Latitude LPt. Its set to boot from the CD-Drive in the bios yet it just skips by and tries the HDD. I have tried the CD-Drive in another laptop and it does work. What am I missing here?

 

[Bandit1]

Hmm.I have a latitude CPx J650gt still.I just dropped in a win7 disc and it boots to it just fine.What os is on it?Mine is win2k sp4?i think...

 

[KyleGates]

well..shouldnt matter what os lol. I wanna boot of the disc. i tried ME, XP Home, XP Pro and nuthin...

(Reason I wanna boot off a disc is because there isnt an OS on the HDD)

 

[corkyg]

Agree. When booting from external media, the OS on or not on the laptop is not part of the equation.

Could be your CD drive is bad. That happens on laptops. That model Latitude (P-III) does have a floppy drive. Boot from it and then use floppy utilities to check out the CD drive.

 

[Bandit1]

You ever figure this out?Sorry about the silly question,so i reckon i deserved a correction of sorts.

I guess i am the sort who does'nt like to just go buy something until i know i have exhausted all possibilities.I would like to mention at least 3 points here.The drive is very easily removeable from underneath.You could first pop the whole drive out after booting and popping the tray open and leave it partially out.Then,you could inspect it,and try gently cleaning the lense.I also noticed,when putting it back,that it takes a very firm push to have it fully seated.When it was not,it did exactly as your problem,just passed it by on boot.Heh,does it read any data disk ok,autoplay an installation disk?

I also noticed that if the laptop was passworded(several options there),the lappy acted a bit odd and booting was lengthily dragged out with a black screen.

Lastly,your best bet for a replacement will be ebay,but it's not super cheap or anything.Hope it works out,now i can say i made some senseable input,lol.