Resolved Can't boot from Disc

I reformatted a friend’s hard drive on a Dell Dimension E510 computer running a Windows XP operating system. After installing the operating system I tried to install Microsoft Office 2003. I put the disc in the CD drive and restarted the computer. When I get the black screen I hit F12, then I arrow down to "Onboard or USB CD-ROM Drive" and hit Enter. I then get a message that says "Selected boot device not available "“ strike F1 to retry boot, F2 for setup utilityâ€. I hit F1 and get the same message, I tried this several times and get the same message everytime. Can anyone please help me figure out how to boot from disc? Thank you.

 

If all you're installing is Office, you don't need to boot to that disc...you don't need to reboot at all.

With Windows running, put the Office installation disc in the CD drive and wait for it to auto-start. The just follow the prompts on the screen to install Office.

 

Remove the office cd & boot normally. Then follow Miz's advice.

 

Thank you for the help. I already installed it by hooking up my external CD drive from another computer. But I would like to be able to boot from disc so I'm not marking this as resolved yet. But again, I appreciate your help.

 

You can't boot from the office disk.

 

Thank you for responding, but when I click on the link you sent me all I get is a page about football. What am I missing here?

 

Did you check the Device Manager to see if they're are any exclamation points or error codes.

 

Sorry, that link is my signature (I'm a Dundee United supporter) and is included in all my posts.

Simply put though you cannot boot from an office CD, you're not meant to, it cannot be done.

 

Sorry wildfire didn't mean to step on your toes. Just thinking is the drive is working at all.

 

No problem,

I would have thought Mark used the drive to install windows though.

Mark,

Just to be sure, what exactly do you mean by booting?
And can the drive read CD's/DVD's?

 

Thank you for trying to help, and there are no yellow checks or question marks in the device manager. The wierd part is I can install their software from the deskeop by just inserting the disk. But I can't boot from disc.

 

Markala, please mark this thread as resolved. Houston you DO NOT have a problem.

Normally you can only boot from operating system disks (Windows/Linux etc) or a few backup/restore/anti-malware utility disks. The application disks are installed after you boot the computer.

I'm not going to respond to this thread again because I seriously think you are either just wasting our time or you should change your experience level to Beginner.

 

bios

just go to bios and change the boot system to hard drive....hope it'll help you

 

Thank you

Wildfire, thank you. I am running Windows 7 on my computer and did not realize that Windows XP is different.

 

OK, I know I said I wouldn't respond further but for the benefit of any other beginners looking in...

Windows 7 is not different, the boot process occurs before any OS (Windows/Linux/FreeDOS/OS2/BEOS etc....) even has a look in.

Bootstrapping is initiated by the BIOS not the operating system. Now I'll concede that your friend's BIOS is probably different from yours but that does not not detract from the fact that you cannot boot from an Office CD/DVD with two exceptions:

1) This is a pirate disk which we have no dealings with on these boards;
2) The disk in question is part of a factory recovery set, but even then you'd normally install the OS disk first then install the applications (in this case Office) from within the OS.

 

@ Markala...what everyone's trying to say is...

When you are just installing "application" type software from a CD (like Microsoft Office for example)...you just insert the CD and follow the onscreen prompts.

The ONLY time you do the F12 / Boot From CD is when the CD's (or software) directions TELL you to follow that procedure.

For example...if you downloaded an application to test your hard drive...and directions said to burn it to a CD...then you would probably have to go through the F12 route.

A good example of this is if you were going to completely wipe your drive with KillDisc and start from scratch for everything on your hard drive.

Hope this helps

 

Thank you Rivermandave, I appreciate your help.