This weekend I installed Windows 7 over XP Pro. My system was a dual boot Ubuntu 8.10 and XP Pro SP2 Now it is a single boot Windows 7 and it will not boot from a bootable CD. How do I get the system to boot from a CD? Bill

I have the same problem - can' t boot from CD anymore. Weird. Even the laptop instructions don't work - which tell you to hit F12 as soon as the boot screen appears. It's supposed to provide a list of boot options (CD, Network, HDD) and it doesn't. I'm wondering if this is a security feature of Win7? And if so - how do I shut it off?

Ican get to the laptop boot menu and select boot from a CD/DVD. However when I do this the CD activity light lights up for a short period of time and then Windows takes over. Bill

Same here - exactly.This laptop is a few years old. Might be a fortuitous anomaly at work, strictly coincidental to the installation of Win7. Maybe it's a M$ conspiracy to get us to buy new equipment.If so, it might have worked. I can't work like this - need my WinXP back.

Are you saying that you can't boot from an XP disk? My laptop is also a few years old, I purchased it in December 2006. I wonder if I set my clock to sometime in September if it will cancel and let me boot from a CD

Hi Guys, Can you confirm you are able to boot another computer using the XPCD? For the CD you should be getting a prompt that asks you to press any key to start windows, I have seen some machines that showa splash screen that hides this prompt and you then miss it. Just out of interest, are you able to boot off the Windows 7 DVD? Gordon. www.longneckconsulting.com

On quite a few systems there's a "Press any key to boot from CD" that appears briefly during the boot sequence. If you don't press a key, the system will revert to booting to the OS.Also, to check the DVD, try it on another system to see if it boots there. Also, try another bootable CD on this system to be sure. - John

Bearing in mind that I was attempting to use a restoration OEM CD (file system CDFS) to boot with, here's what I did so far: 1) attempted to use the OEM book disk on another laptop that was running WinXP ==> no problem, worked fine. So we know it's not the CD. 2) checked the BIOS to ensure the boot order was correct (i.e DVDROM first, then whatever with HDD at or near the end) 3) created a WinPE boot disk, just in case the problem was that Windows 7 changed the boot configuration, and tried it out --> didn't work, still wants to boot to Windows 7 4) bought a new laptop (Vista 64 bit) and am getting ready to take my trusty Mighty Hammer to the old one. I'm pretty sure number 4 will work.

Actually I was finally able to get the Gateway recover system disk to boot. Bye Bye Windows 7 Good luck with Vista.

Well, before taking my trusty LaptopsmashingHammer(tm) to the laptop, I tried one other thing: I installed a BIOS update.FINALLY! The machine was able to read the DVD and boot from it. Apparently Windows 7 borked the BIOS at some point.I'm re-installing the original OEM XP image now......(In other news, the problem served as an excuse to buy a brand new laptop, which I'm keeping.)

I realize this doesn't help that much but my installation CD always tries to boot when I leave it in the drive. Never heard of a OS mucking up the bios.

The behaviour you describe is the way it *should* be, and is certainly what I had set the BIOS to do: I set it the boot order to DVD first, then something else, something else and finally HDD. So it should have done that, but didn't. The bootable DVD was tried on anther computer and worked fine.A buddy of mine suggested that Windows 7 boot manager had pre-empted it all, and that the CDFS that was on the DVD simply wasn't advanced enough - he suggested Windows PE, which I tried. Didn't work. Wasn't the boot manager at all.It was the BIOS. Upgrading it made everything work as it should.