Can't boot from Vista DVD

[BirraImperial]

Hi,

My brother recently compressed the Hard drive from our desktop, when he booted the system, he got an error saying "Boot mgr is compressed". I tried booting from the Vista DVD, but I get an error saying "Boot disk failure, please insert system disk and press enter". I tried booting from the DVD in my laptop and it works perfectly. I installed Ubuntu Linux to my desktop so I know the DVD drive is not the problem. I need Vista because this computer is also used by my mother and brother who are not too comfortable with Linux, and I also want to play Civ IV and other Windows games in it. Any ideas on what could be going on?
My PC specs:

AMD Athlon X2 64 processor.
Asus M2N4-SLI Motherboard
Samsung SH-S182M DVD burner
WD 250GB hard drive
NVIDIA Geforce 7600GS

Thanks.

 

[J-man]

Is your bios trying to boot from the DVD drive? If not, go to the setup and change to boot order.

Do you have OEM Vista DVD or one directly from microsoft?

 

[BirraImperial]

Is your bios trying to boot from the DVD drive? If not, go to the setup and change to boot order.

Do you have OEM Vista DVD or one directly from microsoft?

I set up the BIOS to boot from the DVD drive first... no good. The Vista DVD that I have seems to be the OEM version.

 

[Genocidicbunny]

If it works on other computers, then you're gonna need to find the problem with the pc. First you can try to disconnect the actual HDD. This should force the pc to boot from the DVD drive or not at all. If that doesnt make it boot, then your BIOS is screwy or your DVD drive is shot. In that case you might want to try to clear CMOS ( read up on how to do this if you dont know and find your mobo manual so you can set everythingg back as it should be in the BIOS after ) If that doesnt work, try finding another DVD drive and boot using it.

 

[J-man]

^I agree, test the Vista dvd on another computer, still strange though that you install linux on it. Perhaps the DVD has fingerprints on it?

 

[Genocidicbunny]

^I agree, test the Vista dvd on another computer, still strange though that you install linux on it. Perhaps the DVD has fingerprints on it?

He says he tried to boot off the DVD on another computer and it worked. Its not the DVD.
Ubuntu is on a cd if I am correct, and that might be why you can boot off of it but not the windows DVD.

 

[J-man]

It looks almost like the optical drive is not able to read dvd's. You could try to boot linux and then insert a dvd and browse it. (if you don't have linux installed, try damn small linux, which can boot from a usb memory stick.)

 

[BirraImperial]

I have Ubuntu Linux 8.10, it was the only OS that I could install; and yes, I burned it to a cd. So I inserted the Vista DVD from within Ubuntu and the DVD drive is able to read the Vista disk and all other discs I insert, so I'm really not sure what's going on. I also forced the BIOS to boot only from the dvd (took the hdd out of the booting devices list) and it didn't work. I'll see if I can update the BIOS or get a different DVD drive and try again.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Perhaps the BIOS itself doesn't like the DVDs. I don't know what to do about that, though.

 

[J-man]

Well, this is strange. I don't have a clue what wthe source of the problem is, or the solution.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Could you try burning another boot DVD (maybe Knoppix or something) and see if it's just Vista or all DVDs that the BIOS don't like?

 

[Genocidicbunny]

Simplest thing to try: reset CMOS. It will clear BIOS back to factory defaults which *should* help.

 

[BirraImperial]

I installed a different DVD drive today, and I finally managed to install Windows. I guess it was the drive after all. Thank you all for your help!

 

[Genocidicbunny]

Just for kicks, can you check it with another bootable dvd? Maybe you have the first dvd drive that didnt like Vista!