[in2media]

i have a maxtor diamondmax 21 (250g) and its on the same ide cable as my dvd writer (using cable select).
i want to do a reinstall but my computer boots to the hard drive
ive set bios to boot from the dvd and i know the dvd is fine as ive used it before
how can i boot from dvd

[philthomas]

There's no need to change the jumpers ....... if you have made the DVD Drive the first boot device in bios, just put the Windows Disk in and restart the PC .... when you see the message "press any key to boot from CD" , press a key .... that's it.

[in2media]

but its not booting from cd/dvd
straight to h/drive

[philthomas]

If your bios is definitely set correctly to boot from the CD/DVD Drive and the system is till booting to the HDD, that means it is not acknowledging the Disk that's inserted. This could be a faulty disk or a faulty drive.

Have you another bootable disk you can test with ?

[ComputerRepairStpete]

I also face this problem what I do is Go to BIOS and set Try another boot device to false after this when I boot from CD first time CD ROM don't detect cd but when I try it again I am able to boot from CD, Try it I think might help you also.

[katana]

I'm pretty sure you can't have a hard drive and a DVD drive running off the same IDE cable. only one will work, and that is the drive connected to the master connector on the IDE cable.

[philthomas]

You can have 2 x devices on each IDE Channel, as long as the jumpers are set correctly.

[Hybr!d]

All the jumpers do it make it so two drives on one cable can be connected and detected, they have nothing to do with booting. That is set in the BIOS only.

Chances are you need to press a key when it says so to boot off CD\DVD and if that isn t working than it is likely to be because you have a USB keyboard and they dont work in DOS.