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Question

Unable to boot from IDE DVD drive on old computer

Aug 11, 2016 5:58PM PDT

Good evening, everyone. I hope I'm not posting this message in the wrong subforum. I come to you with an issue that's driving me insane, hoping some of you might be able to help me.

I was given an old computer because mine broke down, and I needed another one for work. I was supposed to plug in my SATA HDD, install a new OS and that would be it, but it's been impossible to boot from my DVD drive. I've tried with different drives and with different discs (Ubuntu and Windows 7 installation discs) but to no avail.

I'm not so sure what kind of machine it is, as I'm not too knowledgeable on this. From the information displayed when I turn it, I know that it has an AMD Sempron. Aditionally, it runs on RAM DDR 400, it has two IDE ports (that's where my DVD drive goes) and two SATAs (where my HDD is).

What I've done so far: after setting the proper boot sequence in the BIOS, I tried plugging the optic drive both as master and slave in both IDE ports (it didn't work, it tried to boot from the HDD, which has a non-functional Windows instalation, that's why I'm trying to install a new OS). I tried unplugging my HDD to see if the computer would boot from the optic drive (I got an error message and nothing happened). I tried both discs on diffefent drives with no results (I know both of them are functional). I thought that maybe this computer was too old to handle DVD drives, but both are recognized and shown in the BIOS, and one of them came with this computer in the first place.

I don't know if I'm allowed to post pictures here, I'm typing from my phone and I don't see any options for uploading pictures, but I'll upload some to Dropbox and put the links here. Thanks in advance and sorry for the long post.

Discussion is locked

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Answer
Pics
Aug 11, 2016 6:08PM PDT
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Answer
All the BIOS screens look off.
Aug 11, 2016 6:12PM PDT

That is I see no HDD on any channel and you are right. Many didn't boot DVD.

You left out make, model of the parts but if this is over 16 years old, it's most likely as you suspect.

There are some Linux distros on CD still.

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Aug 13, 2016 8:29AM PDT

Actually, I was trying to boot using an Ubuntu CD. Did you mean these kind of computers don't boot from DVD drives?

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I guess I was unclear.
Aug 13, 2016 8:52AM PDT

The original PCs (808Cool only had a floppy boot. Later we had HDD and some cards, then many years later CD boot (research El Torito) which was about 1995. DVD booting was hit and miss for years after that.

On top of that, you find that older DVD drives often lose the boot capability but still function as CD/DVD drives. This can really upset clients that you tell them you fixed it with a new drive. They will whine it worked as a data CD/DVD drive.

What are you going to do since it's a 20 buck part?

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(NT) Thx
Aug 13, 2016 10:15AM PDT
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Answer
As a test
Aug 12, 2016 6:06AM PDT

Remove the master/slave jumper from the optical unit.

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Aug 13, 2016 8:32AM PDT

I just tried that on both IDE channels, but no luck. I noticed there's also a jumper on the back of my HDD, I'd never seen thst before, as I've never heard of master/slave configurations on SATA devices. It has 4 rows of pins and the jumper is on the second row from left to right.

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Optical
Aug 13, 2016 8:51AM PDT

Grab a copy of memtest86 burn it to a "CD".
See if it will boot.

Hdd jumpers.
Look on the top of the hdd there might be a label to tell you what the jumpers are for.
If not your off to google with the make and model of that hdd.