C400 not recognizing CD-ROM as boot device

Question

Greetings,

I have a Latitude C400 that came to me with a bad hard drive (and no CD-ROM). I have replaced the hard drive, and acquired a CD-ROM (Dell 24X CD-ROM Module) and media cable, but can't get the BIOS to recognize the CD-ROM as a boot device (using a known bootable W2k CD). I see the CD-ROM in the BIOS, under Module Bay Cable and have the boot sequence set to:
1. Module Bay Cable HDD
2. CD/DVD/CD-RW Drive
3. Internal HDD

All other boot devices are disabled. I have also played with multiple configurations of the boot sequence. When the machine boots, it goes to the Lanworks, Managed PC Boot Agent (MBA), which looks for an RFL configuration, then is supposed to go to the next boot device. Instead it gives me 2 short beeps and displays an error that there is no bootable device. Has anyone ever experienced this problem? Any work arounds?

Thank you in advance.

Noahsarc · Answer

I have a similar issue with a Dell Latitude CSx that I purchased with a clean hard drive.  The Bios are set to boot from CD ROM but the laptop does not see the CD ROM.  It will boot from the disk drive but not the cd ROM.  I am going to see if I can get Windows 95 on diskette, load it from the disk drive then see if it will recognize the CD ROM.  Because of this my guess I will only be able to run Win 95 on this system.  Worst case is to load Win 95 and buy an external CD ROM to the USB port to use CD's.  Hope this works and may help you.

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C400 not recognizing CD-ROM as boot device

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