CD-ROM not being read?

[TuckyCal]

The other night I reformatted my C drive. I have a single hard drive which is partitioned into C:, D:, and E:. These are normally CD-ROM drives, I know. My CD-ROM drives are F: and G:.. yeah.. I know. So I tried to install XP from the CD and it doesn't recognize the CD due to the fact that my drive letters aren't the same. I have tried some boot disks... nothing has resolved my problem.. any suggestions?

BTW: Yes I have done this before. My XP CD is bootable and I have done this operation many times before--this time it's messed up--I don't know why. I'm pretty decent with my computer. Yes, I changed the BIOS. *sigh*

[Bill in SD, CA]

Welcome to TechIMO!!

Your drive letters have nothing to do with booting from a CD-ROM.

Is the drive being recognized in the BIOS?

Bill

[TuckyCal]

yes, it is being recognized in the BIOS--I know it's based on IDE location, correct?

[John Prophet]

whats the boot order in the bios??

as long as cd-rom is listed before ide drives u should be able to boot from the cdrom...drive letters shouldnt matter

[TuckyCal]

my boot order is:

[ATAPI CD-ROM]
[Disabled]

:/

[John Prophet]

hmmmm.....put the floppy first and then cdrom..and see if that helps...maybe the cdrom cant spin up fast enough or something weird like that

[TuckyCal]

I have tried that too.. the CDROM has always worked in the past.

[TuckyCal]

ok, so now I can see my CD-ROM drive.. but I cannot exec setup.exe--the computer tells me I can't launch it from MS-DOS.

[John Prophet]

youre trying to boot to a floppy and then execute the xp setup?? that wont work unless it is the xp floppies (which I have never used so I dont know how they work etc)

do you have another cdrom drive you can try?