Cd rom trouble

[Spikes]

hi all,
I got a few old computers and figured I'd make a "better" one to run Ubuntu as another utility comp in a HP case. Now, I'm using the HP mobo that came with it, 256 ram (dont need much), a little 20gb HDD (again, dont need much to run ubuntu),  2.20ghz Celeron processor, but the problem I'm having is the Cd rom drive. I've got everything connected up as I have in the other older HP, with the cables setup the same. It would boot to the HDD fine (had Win98 on it due to the HDD's old processor) but it almost seemed like the Cd rom didn't spin up when the Cd was in it, so I wiped the HDD clean. When I boot up it goes through bios then says "Operating System not found".

Any ideas?

[gyrene81]

Aside from the "bad drive" answer...is it recognized in the bios?
Is the bios set to boot to the cd-rom if there is no os on the hard drive?
Do you see a light come on the drive as the system goes through post?
Is it on the same cable as the hard drive? (if so do you have the jumper set as slave and the hard drive as master?)
Is that disk you're using bootable?

[Ghosth]

In Cmos what is it set to boot from?

For what your doing you want to

A Boot from CD
B Boot from HD

Then reboot, put windows disk in CD, and see if it boots from the cd.

[Spikes]

In bios the Cd com is recognized as the Secondary master (HDD being primary master)
It's not on the same cable as the HDD and each cable is in it's own, correct slot going into the mobo.
The Device priority is:
Removable Devices
CD-ROM
HDD
Network Boot

[Denholm]

...Do you see a light come on the drive as the system goes through post?...
...Is that disk you're using bootable?

How about those two?

[Spikes]

Describe post for me real quick..like boot-up?

Yes it's bootable.

[batch]

Hmmm..... thinking what would I do if I were faced with the situation:

get a bootdisk on floppy and stick it in...... let the system boot do a dos prompt..... put a different disc in the cd-rom (not the one youre trying to boot from) ....... type    dir D:\      (or whatever drive letter the cd-rom is) and see if it reads anything

now you know if the drive is working...... if its working then you probably have an issue with the disc (not bootable or something else)

if its not working then you probably have a problem with the drive (its not connected properly, it has failed, etc.)

woohoo been a couple of years since I got to say floppy in tech help 

[Spikes]

Hmmm..... thinking what would I do if I were faced with the situation:

get a bootdisk on floppy and stick it in...... let the system boot do a dos prompt..... put a different disc in the cd-rom (not the one youre trying to boot from) ....... type    dir D:\      (or whatever drive letter the cd-rom is) and see if it reads anything

now you know if the drive is working...... if its working then you probably have an issue with the disc (not bootable or something else)

if its not working then you probably have a problem with the drive (its not connected properly, it has failed, etc.)

woohoo been a couple of years since I got to say floppy in tech help 

I've tried countless disks (Ubuntu 9, 8.10, 8, 7, xubuntu, Fedora, SUSE, openSUSE) and each have the same result. I also couldn't get 3 different Cd roms to load up Ubuntu...so I think there might be some operator error in the connections but I've checked and double checked. I'll try the bootdisk tomorrow when I wake up.

[Kermit de frog]

Verify that the CDrom is set to MASTER (single if available) via Jumper
Verify that only the ends of the ribbon cable are being used, and if one end is BLUE, plug that end into the motherboard.

[Tigger29]

Some older CD-ROM drives won't read burned disks.  Try booting with a commercially printed CDROM (like a windows disk), and if that won't read then replace the drive.