problem with booting

bios sees ide harddrive, cdrw and floppy, but wont boot from cd.

Hp pavilion 7935, im just tryin to run fedora on it. my dad has the same issue with another hp machine, just with that machine the cdrom is seen in bios but not by the OS.

I have bios set to boot from cd first, floppy, then hd.

it will boot from a dos 6.22 boot disk, but no hd or cdrom access

we are completely stumped.. thigns we have tried
-changing hardware components, including different hds and cdrom drives
-low level formatted the hd
-reset the cmos by crossing a jumper
-used esc key to use temporary boot device

Have you tried changing the IDE cable the CD-ROM is using?

Since you formatted your hard drive, the system has nothing to boot from. And if the machine wouldn't boot from the hard drive how did you know the OS didn't see the CD-ROM?

there was no OS on the hd to begin with, i have tried switching cables, also putting the cdrw as a slave on the primary ide cable, hp "tech support" said to take it to an authorized repair facility ...

it has only problems with FC or it won't boot from any CD?

maybe only that CD is 'b0rked'.


<troll>while you are at trying new CD's get a decent distro </troll>

it wont boot from any cd, whether its xp pro, server 03, anything ... it seems to skip right over the cdrw

did you try to check the jumper of cd rom and hd? change the jumper of cdrom to master and make youe hd slave jumper....put separate IDE cable for hd and cdrom

i tried several combination, but its back to the original config with each device on seperate ide cables and in master configuration on jumper

we have pretty much ruled it to be a bad mobo ... ordered new one

Please check your cdrw first if it is ok so please check in where it is installed in primary master , primary slave ,secondary master or secondary slave . If your hard disk is connected to primary master then connect your cdrw to primary slave & check
definately it is working

tried all of it .. mentioned it in first post