I used DBAN to wipe the HD clean on an old Dell Dimension C700CXE that I just upgraded to a 1.0 ghz Celeron and flashed the BIOS to the latest revision. I put the XP (upgrade) CD in to reinstall, but it will not boot to it. I have changed the boot order in the BIOS so that the CD ROM is #1. I am pretty sure that this is how I installed XP in the first place (previous BIOS), though I think I just booted to a Win98 disk and formatted, rather than use a cleaning UTILITY. Why can't I boot to a CD?

I tried booting to a Win98 floppy, and then running Setup from the XP CD, but that did not work.

I also tried a Linux CD too, and it did not work either.

I also recently removed a ZIP drive. So the three variables are DBAN, BIOS update, and removal of ZIP drive.

I made sure that the drives were plugged in correctly. The HDD was set as master and connected to the master primary, the CDRW was set as master and connected to the master secondary. This looked good.

However, during my investigation, I discovered that the HDD was jumpered wierd. Like it was supposed to be the default setting, but was on the wrong row. It has been like this for over two years with no apparent issues. I went ahead and moved the jumper to the master position.

After this, I was for some reason able to boot to a couple of CD's (Linux, Ultimate Boot CD), but NOT the WinXP CD.

To elimate the CD, I tried another WinXP CD, with the same result.

I tried the XP CD in a Compaq system with a DVD drive installed. XP booted.

I then removed the CDRW from the Dell, and replaced it with the DVD drive. Everything booted fine.

Then I tried the CDRW in the Compaq. The XP CD booted.

Soooooo......conflict with the Dell L Series A14 BIOS and this AOpen CDRW?

PK
It makes no sense that 2 different XP CD's will not boot....are these copies or originals ? ?Originals.....both UPGRADES. They DO boot, and HAVE booted, just not now on the AOpen CDRW in the L series with the A14 BIOS.

pkWierd...all i can venture is you just had a BIOS flash gone bad. Other than trying another DVD/CD unit in there i am officially out of ideas...Uhh....i DID try another CD drive in the system. And it booted fine.

pkThen there's your solution...Yeah, thats what I was wondering....

BUT, i changed the boot order to floppy, cd, hdd, and now it boots the XP CD on the AOpen drive.

I am still a little leery about GOING forward with this drive. Or could the BIOS be bad?

I did notice that during all of this, the "quick boot" turned itself BACK on, after I had set it to disabled. Should I reflash?

PKfloppy CD and HDD should be the order to leave it set at...flashing the BIOS has PRODUCED many doorstops in it's time.
I wouldn't.When I flashed the BIOS to upgrade the processor, would that have reset to defaults?

Perhaps this has all happened due to messed up boot order?

PK