Member Avatar for Ludo_2002

I was recently given a Dell Latitude CPt which is an old m/c made for Win98 or Me. I suspect that someone has unsuccessfully tried to upgrade the OS from 98 to ME. It tries to boot Windows 2000 Professional, shows a Windows 2000 setup window, but after some time it gets a fatal error and starts the boot process again.

So I'm trying to reload 98SE from CD....but!! the PC won't boot from the CD drive despite me changing the boot order in the BIOS, in fact I've even tried disabling the hard disk in order to force it to boot from CD. The CD spins a bit but it won't boot, says 'no bootable device press F1 to retry or F2 for setup...'etc.

Why won't it boot from the CD?? I have borrowed another CD drive and get the same results so I don't think it's a hardware problem. The Win 98SE CD i'm using works on other m/cs so it's not a faulty CD... anyhow I've also tried a Windows XP CD and get the same result.
Could the m/c be hard coded to boot from the hard disk only??
Can someone help please??
Norman

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by vending1000

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Short summary and likely cause: ’s Latitude CPt showing “no bootable device” while the CD spins usually means the disc itself isn’t presenting a boot sector the BIOS can use, not that the laptop is “hard‑coded” to the hard disk. ’s pointer to hardware checks is sensible, but on these older machines the most common culprits are (a) non‑bootable copies of Windows on CD, (b) a burned CD-R made without a proper El Torito boot image, or (c) BIOS/drive compatibility with the burn method. ’s suggestion to build a custom boot image is on the right track — the ISO must be a true bootable image, or the laptop won’t see it as bootable.

Practical, reliable steps (in order):

  1. Verify a known bootable disc (FreeDOS or a Linux live CD) boots on another PC. If that disc boots, the laptop and drive are probably fine.
  2. Create a DOS/Win98 startup floppy that includes the correct CD‑ROM driver and MSCDEX, boot the laptop from that floppy, then run the CD setup from DOS (example: after the CD is mapped to D:, run D:\SETUP.EXE). Typical CONFIG.SYS/AUTOEXEC.BAT entries look like:
CONFIG.SYS
DEVICE=HIMEM.SYS
DEVICE=OAKCDROM.SYS /D:MSCD001

AUTOEXEC.BAT
LH MSCDEX.EXE /D:MSCD001 /L:D
  1. If a floppy approach is not preferred, build a proper El Torito bootable ISO that uses a floppy image as the boot image and burn that to CD. Many ISO tools support “use boot image” — that is the key difference from a plain data burn.

Final checks and fallbacks: confirm the BIOS actually detects the optical drive and try Dell’s one‑time boot menu (F12 on many models) to force CD boot. If the XP/CD approach is required and booting still fails, consider removing the laptop’s HDD, attach it to another PC to prepare or install, or use a verified bootable external medium — remembering that very old BIOSes often cannot boot from USB. These steps address the most common gaps left by the thread replies and keep the diagnosis focused on bootable media and small BIOS/driver workarounds.

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Member Avatar for bobbyraw

have you check the cd drive cable. maybe power is connected bit not the data cable, or it could be bad. Also are you certain that the CD is bootable., when you say it works on another pc do you mean that is boots up from the cd drive.

Member Avatar for Ludo_2002

Thanks for your suggestion - you are right. I tried various CDs in my other Pcs and they are NOT bootable!!! They contain Windows distributions but are not bootable. Your other suggestion re. the hardware is unlikely. The CD drive just slides into place and there is only 1 connector block, anyhow I have been given a spare 1 to try, although I can't prove that either is working, but they do spin up.

So can I create a boot CD on another PC or what other option do I have??

Member Avatar for vending1000

HI ALL YOU MUST
1.FIND THE RAM /MB/ to see if you can run the cd ,the boot cd works with yur RAM,BIOS,CD/driv's
2.YOU C'T BOOT FROM CD BECOSE D'T HAVE DRIVERS FOR IT ,FIND THE BRAND YOU HAVE AND WHAT WINDOOWS you got
3. USE BURNING SOFT FOR MAKE BOOT IMGE CD LIKE/ULTRAISO/ AND WHEN OPEN THE PRGRAM ON ANOTHER COMP. MAKE BOOT IMGE FILE WITTH YOUR DRIVERS AND ANY RESCEU PROGRAM LIKE /KAV ANTIV./
4.WHEN YOU HAVE DONE WITH THE CUSTOM BOOT IMGE FILE ,COPY THAT TO YOUR HD AND BURN ON BLANK CD/RW
5.HOPE YOU BURN BOOT CD ,FROM THE OPTIONS /ULTRAISO/ ;-)
ENJOI
BE RADY WITH YOU COPY WIN XP ,OR WATHEWR WInDOWS YOU HAVE ....

IF HAVE Q.

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