I’ve had several questions over the last few weeks about why the computer I’m working on boot from the recovey disks (HP Compaq Presario running Vista)when it will boot from an Windows XP disk.
After much time and lots of money, I have it figured out. The DVD player doesn’t know it’s a DVD player. That’s why it booted the Windows XP (CD) and not the recovery disks (DVD).
So I got a brand new Genuine Microsoft Vista Home Premium DVD put it in the machine and tried to boot it from the machine and it didn’t work. So I tried to open the disk from the computer in question (it had Windows XP on it at this time), and the optical drive flashed for a while and ejected the disk and told me to put a disk in. A light bulb went off at this point. I looke for a few more programs I had on DVD and tried them and they didn’t work. I put in a CD and it works.
My question at this point is: (because I don’t want to pull the machine apart to get the DVD player out to check it) are there jumpers on the DVD player that would make it think it’s just a CD player? Is there drivers needed to tell it it’s really a DVD player? What mental health issue could a DVD player acquire that would make it think that it’s a CD player?
Pam
Oh, btw, after I got Vista installed on the computer in question, I tried copying the recovery disks on the D partition that I made when I installed Windows XP, and there still didn’t seem to be a file that would cause the recovery to execute so I kept the Microsoft version of Vista on the machine.
Pam
