Unsolved
This post is more than 5 years old
47 Posts
0
12287
Cannot boot from CD - Inspiron 4100
I have an Inspiron 4100 which is running really slowly, under XP SP3. have perfomed usual checks - Defrag, etc
I would like to reload Windows and run some diagnostics but cannot get it to boot from CD. The CD Drive is installed, recognised, and reads from disks.
I have also altered the boot sequence in BIOS so that the CD drive is first. I cannot understand why it doesn't boot from CD - the only possible explanation I can see is that I have installed a new CD Drive. However to make sure the drivers were installed I uninstalled both the drivers for the old drive and for the new one, then restarted. I did not see an automatic re-install going on but th CD drive is showing up in Device Manager.
Anyhow it is still booting from the hard disk and not the CD drive. Any suggestions, please?
jackshack
6.4K Posts
0
June 12th, 2010 11:00
What disk are you attempting to boot from? If you still have the Dell Resource CD try booting from that. If your laptop supports it you can also try using F12 during the self test after you start the computer. This gives you a one time boot menu and allows you to run diagnostics from a utility partition on the hard drive, assuming you still have the original hard drive. It should also give you the choice of booting from CD ROM.
Enigmaman
47 Posts
0
June 17th, 2010 09:00
Thanks for your answer. There are now so many problems with this elderly machine - now with added BSOD and frayed and malfunctioning power cable - that I am going to buy a new one.
I tried what you suggested and it ran some diagnostic tests from the DELL Resource CD before attempting to reboot.