Can't boot from CD

[gaco15]

Hi All!

I have an old laptop and have problems with the hard disk "unmountable disk".
I have been tring to boot up with the externa CD drive I have to load windows recovery but can't do it.
I tryed going into the bios and there I was able to alighn boot options in numbers. It was from 1-4 and I imagine this is like a priority list but it didn't work.

Do any of you have any suggestions on how to do that, because even if I get a new harddrive I still need to boot from a disk to install and OS.
Any help will be very appriciated! Thx

 

[raybay]

You may need a new optical drive as well as a hard drive, or you may have defective IDE or EIDE cables as the result of old age. They get brittle and stiff as they age, then pull out of the plug, or out of the socket.
What happens when you try other cd's in the drive? Is the boot disc scratched.
On older computers, they often will not boot from an external drive. Does your BIOS allow it?

 

[gaco15]

Thanks for the reply!

You are right it is quite old. Its a pentium 3 laptop with an external cd drive. And I don't know how to get it to boot from any CD.
An about what you said that older ones can't boot from a CD then how will install windows XP on there if I get a new hard drive?
Any other ideas on fixing it? Will an external drive do the job?

 

[Tedster]

a system that old may not be worth to fix. You can build a fairly decent system for less than $500.

 

[raybay]

Likely, an optical drive that old is out of alignment or otherwise defective. Replace it. New ones are $14 to $18... or with a burner from Wal-Mart, Best Buy, or a Computer store, they are $29 for a burner drive or $49 for a DVD burner drive.
An external drive will never work as a boot drive, but will be good in other important ways... such as security and backup.

 

[gaco15]

So how do you install windows if you have no internal CD drive and something ges wrong with the hard disk? I don't know if its relevant but the external CD drive is not usb, its some other connection with 40 pins on one side.

The har disk is fasulty but i stil want to try and format.
ANy ideas?

 

[CCT]

If your laptop is 'that old' it will have a floppy drive:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/310994