Getting a CD to boot on my computer

slinkywyckoff

I bought my laptop about a month ago and am checking out different distros to decide which one I might want to partition with Windows 7. I have downloaded Linux Mint iso and a Mepis iso, but my computer won't allow either to boot up. What do I do?

Goineasy9

Check the boot order in the bios to see if the DVD/CD drive comes before the hard disk in the boot order. On my Dell laptops, either F2 or F12 during boot brings me to the bios/boot up screen.

With some laptops, just hitting F2 during boot up allows you to choose which medium to boot up. At that point just choose the DVD/CD drive and your Linux distro will boot.

vtel57

The first thing I ask in situations like this is are you absolutely sure you burned the CD/DVD as a bootable image... not a data disk?

slinkywyckoff

Okay, F2 worked with Linux Mint. It didn't really give me a boot order list like I'm used to seeing, but I hit F2 anyway and it worked! The first thing I noticed was how much slower it is to load from a CD than when it is actually on your hard drive. I patiently waited only to be disappointed to find that my touch pad wasn't working. What now?

slinkywyckoff

That very well could have been the case because I did do that initially but realized my mistake and fixed it. So thank you anyway.

mfillpot

F2 actually just launches the boot order prompt from your BIOS, it is separate from operating system. Please note that so you can use it for future live boot attempts. Usually the boot order prompt is initialed by pressing F2, F10 or F12 when the computer is booting, the key is decides by your BIOS, so it varies by system.

Have you gotten your touchpad to work yet?

slinkywyckoff

No, I haven't gotten the touchpad to work. By the way, thank you so much for the help. These forums are an awesome resource.

slinkywyckoff

Touchpad is working now. I booted using compatibility mode from the boot menu. Everything seems to be working fine now. :cheer:

Goineasy9

Glad you got it working, any other questions, please don't hesitate to ask.

altNull

Another possibility is that you have a corrupt copy of linux. You'll need to check your MD5 of your copy to the MD5 of the download sight.

Here is a tutorial.


If you find out that it is not a corrupt file, then at the very least you have learned how to check future downloads. If it is a corrupt download then there are ways to prevent this.

[ol]
[li]1. Make sure to start the download at times of the day when the connection is not spotty[/li]
[li] 2. Use torrenting to download, which will auto check the download as you receive it.[/li]
[li] 3. Get a download manager that will check and maintain the integrity of the file.[/li]
[/ol]

Hope this helped.

-altNull