Cant boot from a disk

Question

I am trying to reformat my Dell Dimension 4600 desktop, and It will not boot from the setup disk. The disk is the one I received with the computer, XP service pack 1, however I already have service pack 2 installed. I have the disk in the CD drive but when I start the computer I dont get the option to boot from CD. I tried it in the DVD drive, the one above the CD, but it still didn't give me the option to boot from CD. When I start the computer it gives me 2 options. F12 for boot menu F2 for setup I went to the boot menu and this is what it looks like. 1.Normal 2. primary master drive 3. Hard disk c: 4. IDE CD drive 5.System setup 6.IDE drive diagnostics 7. boot to Utility partition I cannot change to order of any of these. When I go to the setup menu it gives me about 12 options, and one is Boot sequence. i go into there and It has 2 objects. 1.IDE CD-DRIVE 2.HARD DISK DRIVE C: I can only check and uncheck these. I tried unchecking the C drive and starting up and it just gives an erro, so I left it checked. Both are currently checked to boot. I cannot figure this out for the life of me. Please help!

manuson · Answer

Hi there,    First of all, to boot from a disc the drive must be a master drive, which ideally will the top drive...  which means it should be your DVD drive above the CD one...    Just throw the windows disc in the top drive.. press f12 and choose IDE cd drive... this should take care of it.. u must get the 'press any key to boot from cd' message...    If u still dont, then it should be because either the drive has gone bad or the disc is not bootable

edcheese · Answer

Anyone going to help?

edcheese · Answer

The drive works fine, and I can run the CD once the computer had booted up and logged in. However I cannot install it because I am using XP SP2 on the computer and the disk has XP SP1. It wont let me install it, so i need to get to the CD boot menu so I can format the HD and install XP. What you suggested didnt work

mombodog · Answer

Use the F12 boot menu, then use the up/down arrow keys to highlight the 'ide cdrom', then hit enter key, you may get a comfirmation message 'press any key to boot from cd' watch for it and hit enter key again when you see it.

edcheese · Answer

Doesnt work. Boots straight to XP

mombodog · Answer

Set the cdrom as first boot device in the bios.

pcgeek11 · Answer

I recently had the same happen on an older Dell Dimension 4100 series desktop. It would boot off the Windows Me CD or a Windows 2000 CD ( these are the OS's that were originally installed on the system ) but it would not boot from the XP CD. Strange indeed. I did get Windows XP installed by booting from the Microsoft Installation Floppies that can be downloaded from Microsofts web site.   Here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=bbe82a74-76af-4c21-b853-d9f07cbfa559&DisplayLang=en   Look at the very bottom to make sure you get the correct version level of the startup floppy disk.   Home or Pro, SP1, SP1a, or SP2... as they are not interchangeable.   pcgeek11

Windows General

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