On Mon, Mar 23, 2009 at 05:08:53PM -0400, Lisa wrote: >> I'm trying to boot a Fedora 10 Live CD from an 'older' PC that I want to >> use as a Linux platform, but it just won't detect the CD after a restart. >> >> I verified that the PC can detect and boot from a Windows installation CD, >> so I know it's not something broken in the PC. I also verified that the >> Live CD is bootable on my 'newer' PC. >> > Is the LiveCD a CD-RW by chance? Some of the early CD-R drives don't like > CD-RW's and will not recognize their presence at all. "Factory" stamped > CD's, and usually CD-R's, will still work on these without a problem. My > old laptop (now inherited by my father) is like that too. Have you tried a > CD-R, or a different CD-R? > > The second thing that can go wrong is that old drives can get out of > alignment a bit. If the drive that burned the CD is also a bit out of > alignment but in the opposite direction, the variance can be great enough > to render CD's burned on one to be unreadable on the other. Try burning > the CD on a different drive, or if possible on the drive of the target > system. Exactly. I try to fix up old PC's that are given to me and nine times out of ten the first thing that I replace is the CD-Rom drive. I install using CD-RW, so if a drive is iffy out it goes. I have a pile of 30 of them in my basement that you can have for $0.25 :-) Regards, Howard E.