I can't seem to get the dell laptop to boot from a cd. The hard drive is bad so I removed it and changed the bios to boot from cdrom/dvdrom drive. When I restart it I am trying to boot from a puppy linux cd. All it say is primary hard disk drive 0 not found do I have to have a hard drive I thought I could boot from a live cd without it?????

Someone please help!!!!!

I have Bios Revision A05
Pentium II 300 mhz

Hello JSmith,

Do you have another CD or DVD that is bootable you can test with? Like a Windows CD or maybe a diagnostics utility like Memtest86? You are correct in saying you do not need a hard drive to use a live Linux environment.

It is possible your optical drive is also defective. Try resetting your BIOS to the default settings then setting it again to boot off of your CD.

If it doesn't boot off of other bootable disks, it is likely your optical drive is also bad.

Hope that helps.

I tried the memtest86 and it doesn't work either, do you think there is a possibility that it just won't boot from cd? I don't have a floppy right now, but I plan to borrow one to see if I can boot wakepup to search for the cd rom.

Also resetting your Bios? Are you refering to removing the battery?

As far as BIOS reset, I just mean use the reset to defaults option in the BIOS. I would say remove the battery, but since it's a laptop, there probably isn't a good way to get to it.

But as far as the no boot to CD, pretty much every computer for the past 10 years at least, has the option to boot from CD. If you aren't able to boot from CDs and the boot priority in your BIOS is set to boot from the CD drive first, I'm thinking your CD drive may be bad.

Another thing to try is to look for a key that the Dell splash screen gives you to go to a boot menu. Some computers will have a key you can hit that brings up a one-time menu to choose a boot device. On Dells it's usually the F12 key.

Hey, theres always an option for you to boot from a flash drive if you want to, try that and if it works we may be able to cross something off of the list of possible errors. Try getting Ubuntu is you have a larger than 512 mb jump drive, or from any other storage based usb based item, Ive seen people boot off of their ipods.

When I go into the bios and pull the cdrom it shows that it is not installed in the modular bay. When I push it back in it shows up.... It sounds like it is running but I get no boot. I tried the F12 but I get nothing. If it recognizes the cdrom shouldn't it at least give me the boot options.....

If I can get a hold of a floppy or another cd rom drive can I hook it up with a cable and complete the boot? Does it have to be dell products or can I use another?

Sorry to ask so many questions but I am just trying to learn.....