Old Dell will only boot Windows.

foothead

Omnicide now.
Messages
10,027
Location
My own personal hell
I recently acquired a Dell Dimension 4600 that was blue screening because Windows was so screwed up. I decided to put Debian on it and give it to my dad for web browsing. I burned the CD, but when I put it in the drive, it would not boot. Whenever I select the CD drive in the boot menu, it goes straight to the screwed up Windows install. I've tried three different drives and still nothing. A bootable flash drive didn't work either. I am sure that the discs are good, as they all work in my other computers. What is going on here?
 
have u tried the CD and USB in another computer, just to make sure they are bootable and the problem is the PC ?
 
What type of blank CD did you use for the burn? Maybe it's a type that older CD-ROMs have a tough time reading.
 
have u tried the CD and USB in another computer, just to make sure they are bootable and the problem is the PC ?

me said:
I am sure that the discs are good, as they all work in my other computers.



What type of blank CD did you use for the burn? Maybe it's a type that older CD-ROMs have a tough time reading.

It was standard CD-Rs. All three drives were either DVD-ROM or DVD-RW, so I doubt that is the issue.
 
And I assume one of your optical drive do work, right?

Have you tried burning another image, like Ubuntu? Does a Windows CD/DVD work?
 
Do you have a floppy drive so that you're able to flash the BIOS? Maybe there's an issue there that is preventing the settings from taking hold and a flash may resolve?? There's my guess.

Dell Dimension 4600 BIOS
 
Back
Top Bottom