My CD/Drive is playing up so i've borrowed an external one because i want to reinstall my OS. I have gone in to my bios and set it to boot from the external drive but it isn't working. It just says something about the media and starts Windows normally.

Once Windows is running normally i can use the external drive like any other drive :?

Has anyone got any ideas?

What does it say about the media?

On some machines it won't boot from a cd unless you press enter at the right time on boot but it usually prompts you with something like 'Boot from CD?:'. If nothing is pressed after a few seconds it will boot from hdd as normal.

What about changing the boot order in the B.I.O.S? - thus allowing (hopefully) the USB CD Drive to be detected.

It says something along the lines of "Media failure (then drive number)". Then it says it is exiting the drive and boots normally.

kentboy119: I set the notebook to boot from the drive first.

This is doing by box in now :?