[elvisrules]

The Hard Drive is formatted NTFS. It will not recognise ANY CD drives (I have tried 3 different ones, the cables are fine). It is set to boot from CD in the BIOS.
When I boot it says: No bootable CD-ROM, it the BIOS it does not recognise any CD DRIVES. I have tried a WINXP PRO SP1, a WINXP HOME SP1, and a WIN98 setup disk.

I decided to wipe the drive (it previously had XP HOME, upgraded from WIN98) because it would only recognise CD DRIVES in windows and would not boot CDs even if it was told to do so. I thought reformatting wold solve the problem, obviously not.
I am looking foward to your help and advice, I am sorry if I left out any information and/or if my english grammer/spelling was bad.

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Not all cd-rom drives are bootable--old proprietary ones are not.

Did the windows 98 boot disk allow you to see the cd-rom after using START WITH CDROM SUPPORT?

[gerryf]

Not all cd-rom drives are bootable--old proprietary ones are not.

Did the windows 98 boot disk allow you to see the cd-rom after using START WITH CDROM SUPPORT?

[elvisrules]

Not all cd-rom drives are bootable--old proprietary ones are not.

Did the windows 98 boot disk allow you to see the cd-rom after using START WITH CDROM SUPPORT?

I'm not sure about the win98 boot disk, I don't know stuff that technical... I think one of the CD drives I tried is 6 years old, the other two are about 4.

[gerryf]

what do you want to do here? What operating system do you want to load?

[elvisrules]

what do you want to do here? What operating system do you want to load?

I want to install xp pro... When the computer is booting, I noticed that it recognises one of the CD-ROM drives, not the other.
How can I install xp pro if the drive doesn't read bootable CDs and if there isn't any OS on the computer?

[gerryf]

let's try this first....
www.bootdisk.com

download a windows 98 bootdisk and boot with it, choosing with cd-rom support.

when you end up with an A:\> prompt, see if you have access to your cd-rom drives

try

at a:\, type
D:
then
dir

anything?

at a:\, type
e:
then
dir

anything?

[Murray S.]

Howdy:

Where did you get your Windows cd's from??

Are they original or did someone copy them for you??

Murray

[elvisrules]

Howdy:

Where did you get your Windows cd's from??

Are they original or did someone copy them for you??

Murray

They are all legit copies.

+ I will try the boot disk thing tomorrow as I am busy right now