won't boot from CD

[hubertus]

For some reason my windows xp CD will not work in my memorex CD-ROM drive. I get non bootable Cd message. When I swap the CD-rom I still get the same message. Bios finds the drive without any problems. My mobob is aopen ax6bc pro, bios 1.12. This is my second rig and it just started acting up. Weird.

 

[Zugzwang152]

somtimes you will only get whatever drive is on the master setting checked for the CD. See if your CD-ROM is the master. If not, try it in your other drive.

 

[hubertus]

All the settigns are fine because bios sees the drive as secondary master. What's bites is that any drive conected to this mobo refuses to read the media (CDs), but the bios sees the drive. ???

 

[Deskstar]

Is that the latest BIOS for that board? If not, flash it.
Also, I was under the impression (perhaps mistaken) that the AOpen AX6BC series of motherboards is NOT compatible with Windows XP. I know that I tried a setup disk that supposedly examined my own AX6BC and the result was that my motherboard was NOT compatible with XP; maybe the Pro version is, I don't know.
Will the CDROM detect a Win 98 setup CDROM? If it does, then that must be the answer.

 

[MainFramed]

make the cd the first thing that boots in your bios

 

[Crusty]

Is it an original cd or a copy. If it is a copy it might be not have been made to be bootable. Check www.bootdisk.com for intructions on how to do that.

 

[Deskstar]

Your AX6BC will not boot from a Windows 98 CDROM or from a Windows XP CDROM, no matter what CDROM hardware that you install in the machine?
But, that same CDROM will boot from your hard drive and then "read" other CDROMs like audio or games or other programs just fine???

Have you made certain that the CDROM is in the boot up "order" before the hard drive in the BIOS settings???

Have you tried booting Win 98 from a floppy with CDROM support/driver on the floppy and in the autoexec.bat & config.sys files and then seeing if the CDROM can be accessed while in DOS??

Have you tried disconnecting your hard drive completely and putting the CDROM on IDE 1 (Master) and seeing if it will boot from the CDROM then???

 

[hubertus]

The CD ir original from Microsoft. I had Windows XP installed on this rig before. It just started acting up recently and I was having problems with accessing my CDs. Now it's all shot, cannot install 98 (had it installed on this rig as well), cannot install XP pro, had it installed before...This is my "experiment" rig, run fine untill last week. For some reason my mitsumi CD-ROM would not read a CD, swapped the drive and put in 52X Memorex drive...same thing. Both of those drives work fine on my other rig.

I have never seen this type of behavior before.....My next step will be to flash bios to previous version and see what happens.

Thanks for all the help!!