can't boot cd at start up

Hey guys. I have had to problem for a while now. I need major help. I got a new cd drive, and installed it correctly. Now it wont auto run in the start up so i can't install any new Operating Systems such as Linux, or Xp and stuff like that.
My bios are fine, they are set on floopy boot, cd drive, then hard drive. it still doesn't work. It can read the disk but then it doesn't start it up so i can install. What do i do? Plzzz hlp!

 

hey buddy i tired cd rom at first it still wouldnt work

 

do you have more then one cd drive? if so try putting it in the other drive, or temporarily disconnect the slave drive, and just connect the primary

what kind of motherboard is it?

 

i have just 1 cd drive and 1 hard drive

and i have a cognac mobo

 

do you know the model number//how old it is?

it is possible that it is just a glitch in the motherboard, if this is the case, flashing the bios would fix the problem

 

here is a link

http://www.e4allinc.info/dir1/motherboards/socket370/cognacplus.htm

wht u mean flash the bios?
also i got the bios from there site, the ones they "say" are the latest

 

forget about flashing the bios for the moment--

what happens if you have a floppy disk in the drive when you restart? does it attempt to boot to that, but then give you an error when starting the computer? your motherboard looks old and may not fully support CD booting, if this is the case, you will need to use a boot floppy to boot to the CD

 

kay, here it is, whn i put in a floppy for windows XP install it loads it fine and it then takes me to install windows xp and blah blah. But when i have no floppy in there and i put the Windows Xp cd in it doesn't even load it asking me if i wanted to install it or not. So i had to use floppys to install Windows xP

Now i need to install linux, but i can't find boot disks for linux (fedora core 2) . Is there any other way that i can make a floppy what tells it to run from my CD drive? Thanks guys

 

well i just did a pretty good google search, and this is the only thing i came up with of interest:

http://www.samspublishing.com/articles/article.asp?p=169466&seqNum=2

if you can't get any boot disks to work, do you have another computer so you can try a network install? i've never done a network install of linux, so im not sure how it is done.

btw, how do you like fedora core 2 if you've used it before? i was thinking of switching from mandrake to fedora...

 

Try a freeware program called Smart Boot Manager? I have used it with success. Make a floppy and boot to it. See if you CD drive is listed. Hopefullly it will be, then select it and boot to the Windows XP CD (in the drive).

 

fedora core 2 is awsome. i got it instaled but with a shit load of trouble. i can't even get my monitor to go over 640x800. that's bs. but o well. i think you should use Fedora core, cause KDE and GNOME are both usable. I dont know about Manderake, never used it.

 

well thats good, what did you have to do to get it to install?

and you can run both KDE and GNOME, and others too, on mandrake, it just took me like 2 days and many internet posts to get my internet connection to work, lol

 

to install it i had to use my old old ass cd drive that came with the computer. its like a 32 x took forever to install. My new burner tht i got prolly wasn't compatable with the mobo.

 

Had the same problem. What you have to do is manually set your burner's location (Secondary master etc) to CDROM.

Alternatively you can update your bios to the latest which automatically detects the drive.