won't boot from cd

[ezkim0x]

my friend gave me his laptop to format and reinstall windows on. it's a compaq presario F700 running windows vista.

I went into BIOS and checked the boot order and CD-Rom was listed before Harddrive. I actually went ahead and moved the CD-Rom to the first slot, and Hdd to the 6th spot. however when I start the laptop up.. I never see a screen that tells me to press any key to boot from disk. There's an Fkey listed when showing the compaq splash that says F9 to change boot.. when I pressed that it showed a screen asking what I wanted to boot from but it only had one thing listed.. 6. Harddisk. Why isn't the CDrom listed? it appears to be working to me.. a green light shows on the cdrom when it's turned on. I also tried a few different CDs that I know boot. I even put one of them in my computer to make sure it would boot from it, and it worked fine. but not on his laptop. I didn't see any options in the Bios about enabling/disabling OS install for a safety precaution either.

I'm out of ideas.. any help?

 

[daniel49]

when you boot to the hard drive, does the cdrom player show up?
if it shows up can it read a disk?

 

[ezkim0x]

Just played a cd on it.. worked fine

 

[queequeg99]

Here's a long shot (and I don't know if it even is applicable for this laptop) - in the BIOS settings, can you tell if the SATA mode is set to AHCI or IDE? On my desktop machine, if I set the SATA mode to AHCI (which I do because I have an SSD), I cannot boot from CD. Even though I see that I still have that option in the BIOS, it simply doesn't work. If I switch back to IDE mode, no problems. I don't know if this is universal to AHCI or just a bug with my particular gigabyte motherboard.

Good luck.

 

[HMNRBT]

Make sure laptop isn't plugged in and disconnect the main battery.
Open up the memory compartment on the bottom.
Disconnect the BIOS battery. Here's a pic I think will work for you:

See the battery to the left? Unplug that little black and red wire from the board (uhh disregard the wifi thing, lol)

hold the power button down for 20 seconds to drain excess electrons.

Plug it back in and put everything back together.
This will bring your BIOS settings to default.

If that doesn't work, try updating your BIOS

 

[ezkim0x]

i have been away for a few days and didn't mess with it.. but when I tried turning it on today it just kept powering on/off .. power button turns on for 1.5 seconds and boots off.. waits about 3 seconds and repeats the process.

I found this thread on google:

http://forums.cnet.com/7723-6035_102-335521-1.html?tag=rb_content;forums06

seems like a lot of people are having the same problem with this model. one person suggested trying to press the esc key when turning on the pc repeatedly.. when I did this it actually kept the PC on with the blue light on the power button.. but nothing ever shows on the screen like a bunch of people said. not really sure what to try now.

I'd feel kinda like an ass to give him back the computer like this.. granted he couldn't get it to boot into windows anyway.. only way I was able to is through safe mode.

I guess i'll try disconnecting the BIOS battery to reset the bios back to default and see if that does anything.. and i'll post back tomorrow.

thanks for replies.