Botting from USB CD_ROM??? Please Help!! Assignment due...cant install OS.

[ToyMachine]

Please Help...I uninstalled windows today so i could install linux. I found i could not install from my CD_ROM which is a USB CD-Writer made by Acer. My BIOS doesnt detect it. It says no cd rom detected. The drive is plug and play. It works fine under windows after i install its driver.
Is there ANY way i can make it work so i can reinstall an operating system ? I am writing this from my moms comp which doesnt have my schoolwork on it. I need an OS tonight to finish assignments. Please Help if you can. Thank you

RECAP: CD-ROM is USB, Bios doesnt see it, cant install OS without cd-rom, HOW do i make my BIOS boot from the drive?????

Thanks to anyone who takes the time to answer. your time is greatly appreciated.

P.S i will answer any questions you have in real time...i will keep refreshing this post

 

[AndyHui]

USB must have OS driver support. Enumeration of USB devices and driver loading does not occur until after the operating system has loaded. The only USB device that has BIOS support outside of Windows is the keyboard, unless the BIOS has been specifically written to support USB floppies and CDROMs.

Looks like you are out of luck trying to boot from the CDROM. Does your laptop have ANY OS on it? If not, you might want to try laplink or something, and copy over the source files via serial or parallel cable.

 

[Damascus]

You should have thought this through before you did it.

You said the drive worked fine after you installed its
driver in Windows? Then you removed Windows and
expected it to work without its driver? LOL! There's
something to be said about logic...

Anyways, just get a Windows boot disk from someone
that has the generic CDROM drivers and hopefully
that will work for you. Otherwise, you are f*cked.

Edit: hmm does Teac have DOS drivers for the drive?
(Guess that wouldn't work huh)

 

[Jiggz]

I'm assuming you do not have an internal cd-rom but if you do you can use that for the win installation. If you do not have an internal cd-rom and the usb CD-RW drivers are installed on floppy you can try booting from a win boot disk and try installing the usb drivers. If might work or most likely not. Your last option is to find windows in floppies. Another is to borrow an external parallel cd-rom. Think about it, you had an OS before and without the CD-RW, how did they install the OS then?

 

[bacillus]

<< Think about it, you had an OS before and without the CD-RW, how did they install the OS then? >>


the hdd was cloned!

 

[Jiggz]

Or they could have use floppies or parallel cd-rom! Of course, since it's mass produce it must have been cloned. If this is a desktop, I would say I'll remove the HDD and slave it to another desktop. Install Windows in it using the exisiting desktop and copy all my system drivers to one directory and then re-install it back to my system. At least this would be 50-50 chance of making it.