Very important Booting question....

Here's the problem, I can't boot up to any disk on my computer when my computer first starts. I went into my bios and changed the boot order to CD-ROM. But I can still not boot to any disks. The disk is in, but it begins to load windows xp first instead of booting up to the disk. This has been a problem since from the start of my computer... Here are my computer specs...

ASUS A7V8X-X
250 GB 16 MB Cache Maxtor Hard drive
AMD Athlon XP 2800
Phillips CD-R/RW
Sony Floppy
64 MB Nvidia GeForce

I hope someone here can help solve this problem, this is an on-going problem that I need solved. Just to clarify also, I'm 100% positive that I have my first boot device the CD-Rom!

Thanks

 

May seem like an obvious question, but are you sure you're using a valid boot disc?

Also many systems require you press a key to boot of a cd now. If not it bypasses the CD and goes to the HD. It should have some sort of prompt.

Odds are it's one of those two things if you have the boot order correct.

 

Watch the CD drive when you start your computer. Check to see if the light (amber) indicator on the CD comes on. Like Coco said, you get a prompt to press any key if you want to boot from CD. I think you only have a few seconds. If you don't press a key, it will boot from the hard drive.

 

My CD is a valid cd, I've used it on my laptop. The CD i'm trying to boot to is Knoppix Live CD. Yes, the disk is being read, but it stops and starts loading windows xp. And i don't see anything that I need to push to boot to the cd, maybe you could tell me what key you usually have to click.

 

You don't click anything. You just see a message saying, "Press any key to boot from CD." This message comes immediately after the system does a hardware test. You might want to put another bootable CD, preferably a Windows XP CD.

 

A couple of things to try......

Go into your BIOS and REMOVE the hard drive from the boot order altogether....

Another thing to try. Disconnect the hard drive, and see if you can boot from the cdrom.

 

Alright, I'll try doing that.

 

I unplugged my hard drive, and I booted to the disk. So what i'm thinking doing is putting my CD-Rom drive into IDE slot 1, instead of IDE slot 2.