I can't boot from cdrom to upgrade to win 7 64 bit

[KLC]

I have a gigabyte GA-E7AUM-DS2H motherboard and am running Vista home premium 32 bit. I need to upgrade to win 7 64 bit, which means I have to boot from the installation cd. I have set the bios to make cdrom the first boot device. On my other computer there is a clear message on screen that says "hit any key to boot from cdrom" but this one doesn't have that. I have tried hitting the space key during boot up with no results. I have done several google searches and have read suggestions to hit F2, F12 and to hold down Alt while hitting F10. None of these approaches have worked, I still boot up from the hard drive.

Can anyone help me with this? I'm at a dead end.

 

[vailr]

A DVD Rom drive is required, since Windows 7 is too big to fit on a 700 MB CD disc.
May also need to use the down arrow button to select the "exact make and model" optical drive, instead of the generic "DVD Rom drive".

 

[aaksheytalwar]

Maybe your drive isn't reading your DVD, try changing your drive or DVD or both

 

[C1]

Check in Device Manager whether the Optical drive is present & working.
If so, while in Windows, insert the CD/DvD media into the optical drive WHILE HOLDING DOWN THE SHIFT KEY. Open Windows Explorer and see if you can read the CD/DvD.

In the Boot Order Selection section of the BIOS, make the Optical Drive the first bootable device and DISABLE the HDD as a boot option sometimes helps.

 

[KLC]

Well, there is no DVD rom option in the boot list but my other computer which has an ASUS mb also does not have that option and it boots DVDs fine. I can read the DVD fine when in windows so I don't think the drive itself is the problem, of course what it tells me when it reads the DVD is that I have an incompatible upgrade since Vista is 32 bit and win 7 is 64 bit. I'll try C1's suggestion and see what I get.

 

[fralexandr]

you can create a USB boot drive and then set the bios to boot off usb

those are kind of a pain though
http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2009/12/-the-usb-flash-drive.ars

microsoft says you can't "upgrade" a 32-bit to a 64-bit (you can, but there are other steps required)
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/...and-64-bit-Windows-frequently-asked-questions

 

[KLC]

Great news, with some help from you guys I finally figured out the problem. C1's suggestion to disable the HDD as the 2nd boot device was what did it. When I did that I got a message on the screen during POST, it asked if I wanted to enable AHCI, when I disabled that I got the "press any key to boot from CDROM" message. And now, even with the HDD enabled as the 2nd boot device, as long as I have AHCI disabled I can boot with the CD. Thanks for the suggestions and help.