hey guys, I built a new pc in January of this year (specs below) and most boot cds are not working properly on it. XP Professional 32 bit athlon x2 4850e 4GB DDR2 800 RAM Asus M3A78-EM mobo (using the IGP) WDC WD5000KS 500GB hard drive Pioneer DVR-216D SATA optical drive 20" Dell widescreen monitor (1680x1050) I want to repartition my drive so I can install windows 7 RC1 on it but can't get Gparted boot cd to work. This is the latest of many examples of boot cds not working on this new pc. For example the following has happened with boot cds: 1) Hitachi Drive Fitness Test v4.08 (would stall at the first dialog) 2) GParted v0.3.4 & v0.4.1-2 (would allow me to select what mode to use it in but would then go to a blank screen and nothing would happen it just sat there) 3) WD Data Lifeguard for DOS v5.04f & Older version (kept getting the following error message when loading the app “unable to locate the license agreement file, DLGLICE.TXT!!! please make sure that the license agreement file is located in the same path as DLGDIAG.exe...” despite that file indeed being on the CD. 4) Acronis True Image Rescue Disc v11 (would get to the screen where I select between running true image and running windows but after selecting true image it would go to a blank screen and sit there) 5) Interestingly even when I run true image from within windows to try and restore a partition it does the same thing. In order to restore a partition it requires me to reboot and it starts to load on reboot but after the loading dialog it goes to a blank screen just like above. I say this is interesting because this process is completely independent of the optical drive. I've tried using a PATA optical drive and it makes no difference. I've tried using the boot cds with no hard drive attached and it makes no difference I've tested the RAM with memtest86+ for 2 hours with no errors found I've updated the BIOS twice since January with no difference being made Seatools boot cd works fine, ultimate boot cd for windows v3.22 works fine and of course the windows XP setup cd works fine. I have tried all of the boot discs mentioned above on my Acer 5920G laptop and they all work just fine on it so the discs themselves appear to be fine. Any ideas guys? Is there a BIOS setting I may have set wrong? Could it be something to do with the display output or the monitor (used the same monitor with my previous pc with no problems so doubt it's the monitor)? Renoir
Thanks for the reply Denis. I will try a different brand but it seems strange that using true image from within windows (reboots and then goes to blank screen just like the rescue disc) vs a boot CD doesn't work either as that completely bypasses the optical drive. Plus I have used a different optical drive as mentioned above which made no difference. Renoir
it was the only thing i could think of, maybe try a bios update i know ubuntu and gparted stopped my dvd drive working in windows and ubuntu had to kill ubuntu and gparted to resolve
You could try a Linux Live CD just in case. That would be a full OS and not just DOS or something limited (like Acronis and other bootable tools).
