Resolved boot manager is missing when trying to boot from cd

I am trying to do a fresh reinstall XPP from CD. The CD drive is 1st in boot priority but when I boot the machine it doesn’t find the CD. It looks like it is bypassing it and trying to boot from the HDD as I never get the message Press any key to boot from the CD. I get the message boot manager is missing, press Ctrl Alt Delete to continue. I know the CD is good as it works in another machine and have tried other boot CDs but they come up with the same message. The HDD is a NTFS formatted blank drive that I know is good.

The CD and the HDD are connected to the mobo by individual IDE cables. Both the CD and the HDD are set as master.

I started the machine from a boot floppy with CD Rom support and then went to D: I typed dir and got abort retry cancel so I'm thinking that there is something wrong with the drive. Will pop in a new drive in the morning and retry but if anyone has any suggestions in the interim please send them along

Thanks

 

Your CD drive may be on it's way out or dirty. Or, the installation disk may be wonky. Hold the CD up to the light and look for any inconsistencies in the media (wavy lines, small hole, etc.).

When your CD is hooked up to a working system does it read\play OK?

 

Hi cspgsl,
First you have to check if the CD/DVD drive is being registered in the BIOS, this is normally done by pressing F2 or DEL in the first few minutes when the system starts.
Go to the IDE devices or Boot devices and confirm that its being detected, if so then the winXP disc has a problem coz normally when there is no OS on a system or when the system HDD doesn't not have an OS, its by default that the machine will try to boot from CD to find any boot-able media.
Another thing that is always goes unnoticed is when one is creating a disc/burning disc for use and use a different speed than the default, other CD/DVD will not be able to read the disc. It might see the disc as empty.
Since you have another CD/DVD drive then you can try it out and let us know.

Kind regards,
Xrozz

 

swapped the CD drive for another one and it worked. Why is it always the simple things that we forget?

Thanks guys

 

Hi cspgsl,

Because we're human?

Anyway, glad you got the prob sussed out. Please don't forget to mark this thread as "Resolved ".

 

Thanks JP - If you know anything about HDD's take a look at this post and tell me what you think?

http://www.windowsbbs.com/hardware/92666-adding-3rd-hdd-freezes-machine.html

 

I'll answer you over there as it's a new thread.