Can't boot from CD-Rom!

[Moonpie]

I have the CD ROM for Red Hat 6.2 but I also have an older system (doesn't boot from Cd-ROM!!!) I looked around the web and got even more confused, as most sites say something about boot diskettes and chaning BIOS settings-neither of which I understand! Somebody, please help me!! I need a way to have my computer boot from the CD-ROM, but my system can't do that. What do I do/change to make it do that? Thank you so much and please don't assume that I know anything beyond a layperson-I need a "dumbed-down" method, if that helps any.... :)

[SavesNFGDay]

I have the same problem as this....I could use some help too.

[alexicacos]

You have to see this.

As you reboot your computer you have a text...in the lower site of you're screen you ave a message to go to the BIOS. (i hope you can understand me...sometimes my english is not so good ;-)

Depending of your BIOS version you have to look:
First boot devide: floppy
Seccond boot device: CDROM
Thrid boot device: IDE0

so must be if you want to boot from the cd.

That is all you need. More help? just tell us...we'll see want we can do to help :)

[SavesNFGDay]

Well, I don't know about the other guy but in my BIOS there is no option to "boot from CDROM" so I don't reall know what I should do...

[alexicacos]

hi :)

Wich options do you have in your BIOS???
Saludos

[mdwatts]

If your bios does not have the option to boot from cd, then you will need to create the installation and module bootdisks from the ?? dosutils directory on the install cd.

Review the readme in the root directory as it should tell you the directory the diskette images reside in.

[rustskull]

From my experience, this is the quickest and easiest way to do this on any system (even newer ones, because it is faster and easier than going through the bios options, no matter how speedy your system).

1. make yourself a bootable cd (if yours is already bootable, skip this step). you'll be able to puzzle through it in about 20 minutes if you use the info and utilities at this site. It's really, really, really that simple (honest!). If you can't get their utilities to find your cdr, then just build an iso image using the tools and tell your burning software to "burn from image". It is faster to let the utility burn em if you can, though. It also works every time, if it can see your cdr...the beauty of non-gui command-line utilites.

http://www.nu2.nu/bootcd/

(that's the whole thing that's beautiful about the linux community..! Feel free to take, but when you can contribute, do so...)

2. go get smart boot manager from sourceforge (it's also on disk 1 if you have debian 3.0) and use that to boot up the cd you made. It's extremely lightweight and fast.
http://btmgr.sourceforge.net/

3. install whatever you want at that point.

4. have fun! (make sure you tell your friends that your getting into linux so they don't wonder why they never see you anymore after you become addicted)

-rust

PS I evangelize whatever works easiest and quickest, so if you find something that is faster and simpler than this, let me know!