Can't boot any Windows DVD setup disc but can boot other discs&#33

[Nazgulled]

Hi,

Please don't get scared with such a long text, I like to explain my problems in detail so I can help you help me, please continue to read if you think you might have any idea how to help me...

I have an LG laptop which is almost 4 years old and since I can't afford a new one, I can only upgrade and keep using this one. Vista runs fine but it's time to upgrade to Windows 7 and I was so excited when Seven was officially released that I decided to buy a new HDD for my laptop cause the old one is kinda small now...

The problem is that I never thought that my old laptop would have problems with HDDs larger than 137Gb and it has been a pain to make it recognize the 250Gb HDD I bought. The obvious first step was to find a BIOS update and LG support sucks, fortunately, I found an official ISO disk with lots of BIOS updates to many LG laptops in a forum where people reported nothing but success.

The BIOS upgrade process worked fine, but the new HDD was still recognized as a 137Gb drive. Searching a bit more and I found out that some laptops, somehow, before the BIOS upgrade, "locked" the HDD to only recognize 137Gb and I had to "unlock" it. For that, I found something called MHDD but every instruction said I needed to do this on a different computer and I had no means to do that. I just decided to do it locally on my laptop but it didn't work, the process failed. The drive is still reported as 137Gb HDD.

That was when I noticed something different when turning the laptop ON. It usually just said to press F2 to launch the BIOS setup. This time, it also said to press F11 to launch LG recover system or something like that. I thought some screen would just pop up and allow me to do things, but the laptop just went black for a few seconds and restarted. This time, the drive was reported as 250Gb and I thought that now I could go and install Windows 7, was I mistaken...

Basically, this is the story of what I managed to do, today. But since that "F11 pressing" (I believe it was after this), that I can't boot any Windows setup disc. When I try to boot a Windows Vista or Windows 7 setup disc I get the error CDBOOT: CDBOOT: Couldn't find BOOTMGR. When I try to boot a Windows XP setup disc I get the error CDBOOT: Memory overflow error. Also, and because my optical DVD drive is kinda screwed (but that's not the problem, just today I booted the Windows Vista disc many times before doing all this things) I had a USB Flash disk prepared to boot Windows 7 setup and before all this, I was able to boot it many times, but not anymore. I always had to plug the USB key, go into the BIOS, select it and move it to appear before the HDD, save settings and exit. But now, the USB key doesn't appear anymore in the BIOS.

Well, this only seems to be happening to Windows setup discs, here's a few boot discs I also tried and they all worked just fine:

• GParted Live CD
  
• Bart's PE (weird because it uses many of Windows XP boot disc files)
  
• LG BIOS Update DVD (I re flashed the BIOS just to make sure everything was ok)
  

Also, my current Windows Vista installation boots without any issues too...

So, what the hell is going on here... I can boot a few discs but I can't boot Windows setup discs? I read something on the web that may or may not be related but got me thinking that maybe the Windows setup discs are trying to write something on the HDD and are not able to, thus reporting the errors mentioned above. Where the discs I was able to boot, all (or so it seems) don't copy anything, they are just loaded into the memory. What to do you guys think? Anyway to fix this? What should I do?

Either way, Vista or Seven, I kinda need to do a clean install of Windows, this is running slow, but I can't find a way to do that unless I can boot any Windows setup disc. Is there a way I could boot some Live CD that loads itself to memory (if that's really the problem) and then allows me to replace the DVD disc on the optical drive and run "setup.exe"? Maybe with a process like this I succeed in installing Windows 7...

Thanks for reaching the end of my testament

[ripken204]

is the vista disc a legal disk? for seven you burnt it yourself. what kind of media did you use and what program did you burn with?

also, windows should not be writing stuff to the disk since you can boot off of the disk without having a hdd even in the system.

[Nazgulled]

They are all original ISO's downloaded from official sources. The problem is not on the media cause I've used it before and I can use it right now on different computers and it works.

Writing stuff to the disk was only something that crossed my mind that could be different from the other boot discs I tried that worked, something between them must be different for some to work and others not.

[Guest]

nm, I see it even happens on the XP disk

Edited August 10, 2009 by -X-

[Ponch]

I noticed something different when turning the laptop ON. It usually just said to press F2 to launch the BIOS setup. This time, it also said to press F11 to launch LG recover system or something like that. I thought some screen would just pop up and allow me to do things, but the laptop just went black for a few seconds and restarted. This time, the drive was reported as 250Gb

This F11 thing only works if the recovery partition is on the HDD (from factory) which is iobviously not the case with thazt new HDD you bought. It probably appears because you installed a new Bios. It can be deactivated altough it woàn't change much.

Are you 100% sure the Bios upgrade was made for your specific model ?

Can you create /format partitions from your BartPE disc and your HDD reported correctly from there ?

[Nazgulled]

Are you 100% sure the Bios upgrade was made for your specific model ?

The BIOS DVD had lots of BIOS updates to all LG laptops, it even comes with a HTML file describing all BIOS updates released between that time. I took note of my BIOS version before upgrading, which was on that list one of 2007 updates for my specific model and after upgrading, it changed to the new ones that were also in the list for my laptop. Besides, the upgrade process asked me for my specific laptop model and serial number so I think it installed the right BIOS update.

Can you create /format partitions from your BartPE disc and your HDD reported correctly from there ?

I'm not sure what you mean but I've formatted and partitioned the new HDD in GParted and then I boot the old HDD with the current Windows I'm using and I'm able to connect the new HDD through USB just fine and it reports everything correctly. Or so it seems...

[puntoMX]

Okay, so it doesn't show F2, but you still can push it to enter the BIOS I presume, did you try that?

If you can enter the BIOS do a BIOS reset or "reset to defaults" as they call it too. If you can enter the BIOS you can enable F10 and F2 to show up in the bootup screen too. Somehow it doesn't seem to see the DVDs and after that it goes to the harddisk (well, at least that is what I believe it does)...

[Nazgulled]

Okay, so it doesn't show F2, but you still can push it to enter the BIOS I presume, did you try that?

You got it wrong, it does show "Press F2 bla bla...", I've entered the BIOS many times...

If you can enter the BIOS do a BIOS reset or "reset to defaults" as they call it too.

Done that many times too, didn't help.

If you can enter the BIOS you can enable F10 and F2 to show up in the bootup screen too.

My laptop BIOS is very limited in what you can configure, there's no such option to enable or disable.

Somehow it doesn't seem to see the DVDs and after that it goes to the harddisk (well, at least that is what I believe it does)...

Not quite that I think... I just tried to disable (set to None) the Primary Master, which normally is the main HDD and the DVDs booted just fine. Set the Primary Master to the HDD and they don't boot anymore.

Well, I was able to install Windows 7 anyways into the new HDD without any kind of DVD following this guide:

http://www.mydigitallife.info/2008/12/24/h...hout-dvd-media/

Although I really wanted everything working correctly, I'm OK with that, as long as I can use a clean install of Windows 7, It's enough for me for now cause I've a lot of work to do and my current Vista install was too slow to work with.

Thank you all for your support.