Boot from CD?

[mayorredbeard]

How do you make it so that your computer boots from a cd, rather then looking to boot from your harddrive first? Usually if i pop in a windows xp disc itll automatically boot from that, not happening with my linux (gentoo) cd.

 

[CrossCech]

confirm that your BIOS has your boot order set with cd-rom as the first source. If that doesnt work, try disabling any other boot sources in the list ... particularly the hard drive. You can reset the boot order again later by accessing BIOS upon restarting your pc.
To access your BIOS, it depends on your motherboard manufacturer ... but odds are if you hit delete a few times as soon as the first screen comes up during boot, you'll get in. Good luck.

 

[mayorredbeard]

when i first boot up it tells me to hit f10 for a bootmenu, i do so, and then select my cd-rom as the primary boot. It seems to be attempting to do it, and i hear my cd-rom working and blinking, but it seems like it cant and just boots from my harddrive after my cd-rom fails. Is their anything i need to do to make my cd a bootable source? I used nero to burn it to the cd as a data cd.

 

[Kage]

That won't work.

You should burn it as a Image CD, which is a data cd, yet can contain bootable data too.

Go back to nero and this time, select Image as the backup type and it'll burn the contents as wished, which will then boot at startup.

The reason its failing is because it can't find any bootup information and so is just carrying on, like it would if for example you had a game in there or a music cd.

 

[dyserq]

Yes, the CD should not be a normal data cd that you can read files from, it should be a bootup one with the ISO image on it, try Nero, Alchohol 120% or XP Burner Pro ...

 

[CrossCech]

thats a good point Kage ... he's able to boot from cd with his XP cd ... so clearly something is up with his linux cd not being bootable. Should have read the post more in depth.

 

[mayorredbeard]

wen i get home i will try making it as a backup image cd.

 

[Kage]

Thanks Crosstech, and its a mistake anyone can make.

Tell us how it goes

 

[mayorredbeard]

ok, im going to list every single option nero will let me burn the cd as:

- Data CD
- Data DVD
- Make Audio and Data CD
- Make Audio CD
- Convert Audio CDs to Nero Digital Audio
- Encode Audio Files
- Convert Audio CDs to audio Files
- Make MP3 CD
- Make MP3 DVD
- Make WMA CD
- Make WMA DVD
- Make video CD
- Make Super Video CD
- Copy CD
- Copy DVD
- Backup Files
- Restore Backups
- Shcedule Backups
- Burn Image to Disc


I assume the one i want is burn image to disc right?

 

[mayorredbeard]

ok i got it to boot from the cd, and i get into the gentoo linux installation, but then i get into like a command prompt type thing, and i dont know how to get the installation past that.