Maybe off topic - strange problem with external DVD RW drive

G

Gordon

I really don't know where to go with this, so I thought someone on here
might be able to help.
I have a Netbook (Toshiba NB100) that has no optical drive. I have a
Liteon external USB DVD/CD RW drive.
I am trying to install XP on the Netbook.
The netbook consistently refuses to boot from the XP CD. It either just
flips into the current OS (Ubuntu) or gives the dreaded "Can't find
NTLDR" error.
And yet - it will boot from an Ubuntu disk perfectly well, AND if I plug
this external drive into my Windows 7 machine, (another Toshiba
Satellite laptop) that machine will boot quite properly from the XP CD
in the same external drive!!!!
Can anyone cast any light on what on earth is going on?
 
E

Ed Cryer

I really don't know where to go with this, so I thought someone on here
might be able to help.
I have a Netbook (Toshiba NB100) that has no optical drive. I have a
Liteon external USB DVD/CD RW drive.
I am trying to install XP on the Netbook.
The netbook consistently refuses to boot from the XP CD. It either just
flips into the current OS (Ubuntu) or gives the dreaded "Can't find
NTLDR" error.
And yet - it will boot from an Ubuntu disk perfectly well, AND if I plug
this external drive into my Windows 7 machine, (another Toshiba
Satellite laptop) that machine will boot quite properly from the XP CD
in the same external drive!!!!
Can anyone cast any light on what on earth is going on?
Have a good look at your Netbook hard drive; from Ubuntu, that is.
What size is it? How partitioned? Any sign of a Windows folder?

Ed
 
C

Char Jackson

I really don't know where to go with this, so I thought someone on here
might be able to help.
I have a Netbook (Toshiba NB100) that has no optical drive. I have a
Liteon external USB DVD/CD RW drive.
I am trying to install XP on the Netbook.
The netbook consistently refuses to boot from the XP CD. It either just
flips into the current OS (Ubuntu) or gives the dreaded "Can't find
NTLDR" error.
Repeated attempts yield TWO sets of results? When given the same
input, computers are supposed to provide the same results every time.
The netbook seems to have a problem with consistency.
And yet - it will boot from an Ubuntu disk perfectly well,
Are you sure it's booting from the Ubuntu disc, or is it simply
booting from the internal drive (which also contains Ubuntu)?
AND if I plug
this external drive into my Windows 7 machine, (another Toshiba
Satellite laptop) that machine will boot quite properly from the XP CD
in the same external drive!!!!
Can anyone cast any light on what on earth is going on?
Sounds like a config issue or other problem with the Netbook. Is there
a BIOS update that addresses an issue related to booting from an
external drive? Is there any BIOS update at all? Sometimes release
notes are not complete.
 
E

Ed Cryer

80 GB


One partion


Nope

How would that impact on booting from a bootable CD?
The problem is with what the CD finds in your system; and it's found
something it objects to.

Ed
 
G

Gordon

The problem is with what the CD finds in your system; and it's found
something it objects to.

Ed
Eh? The CD isn't accessing the system when it boots....
 
P

Paul

Gordon said:
I really don't know where to go with this, so I thought someone on here
might be able to help.
I have a Netbook (Toshiba NB100) that has no optical drive. I have a
Liteon external USB DVD/CD RW drive.
I am trying to install XP on the Netbook.
The netbook consistently refuses to boot from the XP CD. It either just
flips into the current OS (Ubuntu) or gives the dreaded "Can't find
NTLDR" error.
And yet - it will boot from an Ubuntu disk perfectly well, AND if I plug
this external drive into my Windows 7 machine, (another Toshiba
Satellite laptop) that machine will boot quite properly from the XP CD
in the same external drive!!!!
Can anyone cast any light on what on earth is going on?
In general, software is a bit too nosy for its own good :)

I have a machine here, where if you zero a disk (dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda),
the machine will hang in the BIOS on the next boot attempt, and it doesn't
matter what you offer as boot media. That drive has to be unplugged,
before the boot process will work normally (I can then put that drive
in a USB enclosure, and fix it). Even if the CD is ahead of the hard drive in
the boot order, that BIOS still insists on looking at the MBR (and
it gets pissed if it doesn't see a well-defined structure it
recognizes). The BIOS really shouldn't do that.

Before doing anything else, if you intend to keep the UBuntu that is
on the netbook hard drive, you may want to save it somewhere while
you experiment. Things important to Ubuntu, might be MBR, sector 1-62
(grub hides in there), main Ubuntu partition, swap partition etc. You
don't need to back all of it up... if you know how to reinstall grub :)
I don't know how to do that.

*******

There is a tool here, which can write the MBR. It's supposed to
write some kind of Windows MBR, from Linux.

http://ms-sys.sourceforge.net/

Step 1, use GNU parted to create your FAT32 partition and file system:

parted (then create partition and file system)

Step 2, write the MBR:

ms-sys -w /dev/hda

Perhaps that would be enough, to clean out the MBR. And then,
maybe the picky installer CD will work.

In the past, I would have made the assertion that zeroing the disk
would be enough, but that's no longer a suggestion on my list.

I have a relatively small collection of machines here, and
I've seen enough flaky behavior like you're seeing, to not
be surprised by this. I've had trouble installing Windows (on
a previous Linux HDD) and Linux (on a previous Windows HDD).
"If in doubt, hammer it out..."

Just a guess,
Paul
 
U

Unk

I really don't know where to go with this, so I thought someone on here
might be able to help.
I have a Netbook (Toshiba NB100) that has no optical drive. I have a
Liteon external USB DVD/CD RW drive.
I am trying to install XP on the Netbook.
The netbook consistently refuses to boot from the XP CD. It either just
flips into the current OS (Ubuntu) or gives the dreaded "Can't find
NTLDR" error.
And yet - it will boot from an Ubuntu disk perfectly well, AND if I plug
this external drive into my Windows 7 machine, (another Toshiba
Satellite laptop) that machine will boot quite properly from the XP CD
in the same external drive!!!!
Can anyone cast any light on what on earth is going on?

Try changing a BIOS setting from AHCI to IDE mode...

Unk
 
D

Dominique

You know, I think you're on to something...Good thinking.
I don't think it should affect booting from a USB device. It should boot to
the XP installation CD (assuming everything is set properly in the BIOS)and
if in AHCI mode, the installation would report "no hard drive found".

I suspect something not quite right in the OP BIOS boot order.
 
G

Gene E. Bloch

I don't think it should affect booting from a USB device. It should boot to
the XP installation CD (assuming everything is set properly in the BIOS)and
if in AHCI mode, the installation would report "no hard drive found".

I suspect something not quite right in the OP BIOS boot order.
If the boot CD or Thumb Drive doesn't have AHCI drivers, then the system
on that device won't be able to read hard drives in AHCI mode. And
that's possibly where the NTLDR is.

I have a cloning backup program that provides the facility to make a
bootable CD. Said CD won't boot on a laptop I have, and that laptop
doesn't give me access in the BIOS to the AHCI vs IDE setting.

The program's tech support said, in effect, find your own drivers to
install at boot time from a floppy. I couldn't find drivers that worked,
and the tech guy never answered my requests for links to better drivers.
I no longer use the program and of course I no longer buy upgrades to
it.
 
D

Dominique

If the boot CD or Thumb Drive doesn't have AHCI drivers, then the system
on that device won't be able to read hard drives in AHCI mode. And
that's possibly where the NTLDR is.
<snip>

I understand that, but it shouldn't stop the USB device from booting.

The OP says he's got the "missing NTLDR" message, so it seems his system
is trying to boot from the hard drive.

An XP installation CD should be able to run to some point even if SATA is
set to AHCI or even if there's no hard disk at all in the system.

When you setup a new system, there's no NTLDR on the HD and that doesn't
stop the installation to proceed.
 
G

Gene E. Bloch

<snip>

I understand that, but it shouldn't stop the USB device from booting.

The OP says he's got the "missing NTLDR" message, so it seems his system
is trying to boot from the hard drive.

An XP installation CD should be able to run to some point even if SATA is
set to AHCI or even if there's no hard disk at all in the system.
Maybe it ran to the point of the NTLDR message :)
When you setup a new system, there's no NTLDR on the HD and that doesn't
stop the installation to proceed.
Maybe so.

Still, I had a program that wouldn't boot from its CD without the needed
drivers. It wasn't a Windows installation CD, of course.
 
G

Gordon

If the boot CD or Thumb Drive doesn't have AHCI drivers, then the system
on that device won't be able to read hard drives in AHCI mode. And
that's possibly where the NTLDR is.
There's an option immediately after boot from the CD to press F6 to
supply additional hardware drivers like SATA drivers - it's worked
before, but not apparently now...
 
R

Rob

I really don't know where to go with this, so I thought someone on here might be able to help.
I have a Netbook (Toshiba NB100) that has no optical drive. I have a Liteon external USB DVD/CD RW drive.
I am trying to install XP on the Netbook.
The netbook consistently refuses to boot from the XP CD. It either just flips into the current OS (Ubuntu) or gives the dreaded "Can't find NTLDR" error.
And yet - it will boot from an Ubuntu disk perfectly well, AND if I plug this external drive into my Windows 7 machine, (another Toshiba Satellite laptop) that machine will boot quite properly from the XP CD in the same external drive!!!!
Can anyone cast any light on what on earth is going on?
Double check all of the BIOS options.
You may need a 'legacy' USB setting to enable an external USB
connected optical drive to be recognized properly.
Once the BIOS is set properly, such a device will be seen as
an ATAPI CD/DVD drive and as long as you have the other BIOS
options set to 'boot from CD first', all should be well.
You do not normally need to bother with 'Boot USB devices first'
when booting from USB optical devices as the BIOS CD emulation
takes care of that. 'Boot USB devices first' is normally only
required for bootable USB memory sticks.
Some, none or all of the BIOS features I mention may be available -
I don't know that particular netbook BIOS.

Otherwise, it may be a quirk such as the one Paul mentions.
Hopefully not though as it'll be a fair bit of extra work.
 
G

Gene E. Bloch

There's an option immediately after boot from the CD to press F6 to
supply additional hardware drivers like SATA drivers - it's worked
before, but not apparently now...
When I had a boot disk for a backup program, I used that technique.

Unfortunately, the drivers I was able to track down never worked, and
the tech guy for the backup program didn't answer my requests for
suggestions, so I gave up on said product...

But, for a silver lining, at least I leaned how to use the technique you
mention.
 

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