Can't boot from CD or HDD

Possible causes for not being able to boot into either the CD or HD? I’ve reset factory bios defaults. I’ve set to boot to CD first and I’ve set to boot to HD first. Nothing seems to take. Ideas?

bad cd drive?

Would a bad cd drive prevent me from booting to the HD even when I have it set to not try to boot from it at all?

is there anything on the screen to suggest what is wrong or at what stage it stopped its POST?

otherwise, it sounds like you might now have a new boat anchor.

The computer should still boot even if the CD-Drive is unplugged and the correct boot sequence ‘drive selection’ order is in place. I am assuming the computer is detecting the HDD correctly, etc.

I presume this was a recently working machine and had an OS installed?

It stops right at the blinking cursor screen. If I turn all boot options off and tell it to boot from cd after about 30 seconds it tells me no bootable media could be found. I know the cd is bootable and have tried other ones. So the bad cd drive fits except if I turn that option off and have it boot right to HD first it does the same thing minus the time out telling me a bootable media couldnt be found. Could this be caused by bad hardware?

maybe just your HDD has crashed and you need to replace it.

hope you have backups.

but if you can’t boot from your cd drive as well, assuming you have a bootable cd inserted, I think it’s more than just your HDD.

Ok so what can cause the system to not be able to boot anything up…

  1. loose connection under the bonnet of your pc

  2. hdd crash

  3. blown power supply in your pc

  4. corrupted bios

  5. faulty CMOS chip

and others

Sounds like a corrupt boot sector on the hard drive – it claims it can boot, but never fires off. Could also be a bad CD that shows up but doesn’t successfully read.

Troubleshooting steps would be:

  1. Unplug all drives, try and boot. You should get a “dude, I can’t find a boot device”
  2. Plug one in, boot – it will or will not work
  3. if device in #2 works, then try the other device.

You’ve just nailed down the culprit.

Kind of odd that one can stop both. My moneys on the cd drive because it actually times out and says it cant find one when I know it is bootable media. HD just goes on forever.

Please try to remove your RAM mem and boot without it, and after that put it back again and reboot your PC.