4 replies to this topic

[DonB]

If I create a bootable CD, the PC boots OK from the CD.  The boot image contains the appropriate autoexec.bat, config.sys, and cdrom drivers to load both my Plextor DVD burner and Sony CD reader. All drives, including DVD drive, are readable.  Everything works as it should

If I create a bootable DVD, using the exact same process, and exact same boot image, the PC will not boot from the DVD, even though it is in the same drive that the bootable CD booted OK from.  When I try to boot from this DVD, the disk is looked at, no boot files are found, and the PC moves on and boots from the hard disk.   If I look at this DVD boot disk in Windows Explorer, the disk read fine, showing the following files, in addition to whatever data files I put on the DVD.
BOOTCAT.BIN         2KB
BOOTIMG.BIN    1440KB

Suggestions greatly appreciated as to what I am doing wrong?

DonB

[grandpabruce]

DonB, on Feb 18 2007, 06:14 PM, said:

If I create a bootable CD, the PC boots OK from the CD.  The boot image contains the appropriate autoexec.bat, config.sys, and cdrom drivers to load both my Plextor DVD burner and Sony CD reader. All drives, including DVD drive, are readable.  Everything works as it should

If I create a bootable DVD, using the exact same process, and exact same boot image, the PC will not boot from the DVD, even though it is in the same drive that the bootable CD booted OK from.  When I try to boot from this DVD, the disk is looked at, no boot files are found, and the PC moves on and boots from the hard disk.   If I look at this DVD boot disk in Windows Explorer, the disk read fine, showing the following files, in addition to whatever data files I put on the DVD.
BOOTCAT.BIN         2KB
BOOTIMG.BIN    1440KB

Suggestions greatly appreciated as to what I am doing wrong?

DonB

Why would you want to make a bootable DVD????               

[gi7omy]

This is almost certain to be a hardware problem. Some motherboards only allow a certain time period for the boot record to be read from an optical disc and a DVD takes longer for that to be accessed than a CD will. The result is the BIOS times out and moves to the next boot device.

I had that problem with my last motherboard - commercially produced bootable DVDs just failed to boot where CDs booted with no problem.

[DonB]

grandpabruce, on Feb 18 2007, 04:29 PM, said:

Why would you want to make a bootable DVD????               

The DVD contains a ghost image of my boot partition on my hard disk.  The boot sector on the DVD contains the ghost program so I can use the disk to start and restore the pc.

My work around is to use a boot cd to start the pc with the boot cd in my CDROM reader drive, with the DVD containing the image in my DVD burner.  Once the PC is started from the boot cd I can start ghost from the Boot cd and restore the image from the DVD.  I have tested this and it works great.   What I want to do it put the boot files and image on one bootable DVD.

[gi7omy]

As I said in the earlier post, this is almost certainly down to your motherboard BIOS timing out before it can read the boot sector on the DVD. It's a well-known issue in some boards and there is no fix unfortunately