hi,

i have got a pretty old p3 system. the system works fine except the cdrom.
When windows start, if i insert the cd i could read the content in the cd.
however, if i wanna read a bootable cd, i cant do it when the system boots up.
im pretty sure this has got nothing to do with the cd rom/ cd because i've tried it with other cpu and they both work.
i tried adjusting it in bios but it keeps saying there's no media found.

any idea??If you are only using one hard drive then you could try plugging both your hard drive and CD drive into IDE port 0 (as apposed to HDD in IDE 0 & CD in IDE 1; some MOTHERBOARDS label them IDE 1 & 2). This would probably MEAN that your IDE port is broken though and permanently LIMIT you to 2 IDE drives, unless you were to buy a new motherboard. Although with that age of PC I doubt that it would be worth buying unless you found an old board at a BOOT fair.Did this just start? If so, what is different since the last time the drive worked (new hw, sw, error, etc)?

What is on these bootable CD's ? ?
Did you create them or are they factory ? ?Sorry - I misread the POST and had it backwards - thought it worked at boot but not within Windows.

Oops I think that I have misunderstood as well. Are you getting a "no media" message when booting from the CD or when identifying drives in the BIOS? If your getting no media found from booting then what I said in my earlier post is uncalled for at this time.