RedHat 9 CD will not boot

[Rob G.]

I've tried downloading from two different sites (including Redhat themselves), tried different burn speeds, different burners, different PCs and this thing will not boot. Other bootable CDs I have are fine.

Have they changed something or did they just not test this properly?

 

[awal]

did you run a MD5 checksum to verify your isos?

 

[Rob G.]

Yup, all checks out ok.

One thing that I thought a little odd was having to tick the 'finalize' option when burning the ISO from Nero. Actually, thinking about it I don't recall having to do this for an ISO burn before. Can't see what difference it would make but I suppose it's worth a go.

 

[awal]

did you do file -> burn image? or did you create a new compilation? i used Nero to bun the Redhat 9 iso and had no problem what so ever? are you able to view the cd contents in windows explorer?

 

[Rob G.]

I did Burn >> Image, same as I have for previous versions and a pile of other discs.

I can see the disc contents fine. Weird.

 

[awal]

I had the same thing happen to me... It turns out the CDs i bought were bad.

 

[MasterSamwise]

Redownload, try again. Try burining something else first as suggested.

 

[Rob G.]

Mmm... the plot thickens.

The soon-to-be 'Redhat box' is my old Asus CUBX / PIII600 system. The single hard drive is connected to one of the onboard CMD ATA66 controller ports. I've had no problem running previous versions of Redhat and Slack on this. If I switch the drive over to the standard IDE port then I can boot from the CD but NOT if it's on the '66 port.

What would cause this? I could understand it more if RH booted off the CD and complained about not finding a drive (like 2K and XP does unless you force the CMD controller into standard ATA mode by hitting F11 on boot) - but all I get is 'missing operating system' and it's like it refuses to even start booting from the CD. Very odd.

 

[cleverhandle]

Some controllers can be picky about discs - I've worked on older machines that will only boot off of Debian and Win98 CD's and no others. Sounds like RH changed their boot loader version or configuration and the CMD doesn't like it.