T21 won't boot from CD-RW Drive

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jreeves · #1 Post by **jreeves** » Sat May 06, 2006 5:11 am

Here's a fun one...

I have a T21 with a Matsui CD/RW drive, windows 2k pre-installed. When in Windows, the CD drive works fine, I can read data off it and the world is a happy place.

Howerver, when I try to boot from a CD (I have tried both Gentoo Linux and WinXP - both of which work on my other mahcines), I get nothing, nada.

I have disabled all other boot methods other than ATAPI CD DRIVE in the bios, but it doesn't even try to spin the drive up (eg: no green access light). When I first power on the machine from off state, you can hear the CD Drive whirr for a few seconds during POST.

Any ideas?

Website · #2 Post by **tfflivemb2** » Sat May 06, 2006 7:56 pm

Have you tried pressing F12 to choose an alternate boot device?

Vitty · #3 Post by **Vitty** » Sun May 07, 2006 4:40 am

Theres not a 'try other boot devices' option in the bios is there?

Without booting my T22 up i cant remember.

If so, make sure its enabled!

Is it recognised in the bios as a drive?
V

Bgradid · #4 Post by **Bgradid** » Sun May 07, 2006 4:49 am

I remember having a similar situation with my t21 when i was installing gentoo. F12 definitely ended up being the way to go.

jreeves · #5 Post by **jreeves** » Sun May 07, 2006 8:22 am

Well, I indeed try pressing F12 to select another boot device - I chose ATAPI CD Drive from the list, but it doesn't work - it doesn't even spin the CD drive (no activity light) - just boots straight into Win2k on the HDD.

The CD Drive is not actually listed in the BIOS - where should it appear, is there anything I can change to enable / disable it in BIOS that I've missed?

Thanks
jonny.

radek · #6 Post by **radek** » Sun May 07, 2006 4:51 pm

Try upgradeing your drives firmware - it might help. BTW: what are the colours of your cd discs bottoms ? I mean are they standart or maybe green,purple ? How old is your cd-rw drive ?

#7 Post by **schen** » Sun May 07, 2006 6:10 pm

Please ignore if you've already tried this, but have you updated your BIOS?

jreeves · #8 Post by **jreeves** » Mon May 08, 2006 8:00 am

Hey

BIOS is on the latest version. I haven't updated the CD-RW firmware, do you know where I can obtain that from?

Thanks
jonny.

radek · #9 Post by **radek** » Mon May 08, 2006 1:05 pm

I have found a firmware on ibm web site. It supports most common optical drives (however i'm not sure if there are cd-rw firmwares because i have upgraded my dvd only). ......Or download it from your drives manufacturer site. If you encounter trouble wth. identification of your cd-rw drive: Google->download PC Wizard 2006 - it's a freeware

radek · #10 Post by **radek** » Thu May 11, 2006 4:07 pm

So will you tell us if it works ?

pleease

jreeves · #11 Post by **jreeves** » Sat May 13, 2006 5:40 pm

Hey

Well, I went to the IBM Site and found the firmware download for my ujda310l f/w 1.38 optical device. -- http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... MIGR-41026

That page has two .exe files for download, however, when they are executed nothing happens (when I try it from the DOS prompt it doesn't get much closer to creating boot disk's either)

Anyone know where I can get the real bootdisc creators from so I can flash my optical drive?

Thanks
jonny.

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