DVD burns iso, mounts disk, but doesn't boot burned iso.

bigrigdriver · 09-29-2013, 10:02 AM

I have a very perplexing problem with my DVD drive. The problem
elements are as follows:

I have downloaded Debian 7.1 DVD iso and CD iso for testing prior to
installation.

I verified md5sums of the downloads against the published md5sums at
the download website.

I used qemu to boot successfully the downloaded isos.

I burned the isos to CD/DVD. On completion of the burns, I mounted the
disks and inspected the contents. All seems in order.

I unmounted the disks and rebooted my PC.

Nothing. Boot goes directly into grub and my installed Debian.

I then tried burning an iso to usb stick, but that also doesn't boot.

EDIT: I then used the hwinfo utility command "hwinfo --cdrom" with each disk in the drive, and hwinfo indicates that the disks are bootable.

I rebooted and checked the BIOS settings. Boot order is:
a. removable media (usb) first.
b. cdrom
c. hard drive

The drive functioned properly as recently as three months ago when I
burned PCLinuxOS FullMonty, Partition Magic, and System Rescue CDs and
DVDs. On rebooting after each burn, the disks booted proberly.

I've tried google searchs on the issues of DVD drives being able to
burn isos, mount the disk, but be unable to boot the disk. I have found
nothing helpful that isn't covered above.

I am at a loss for what to try next.

Any suggestions from LQ members would be greatly appreciated.

EDIT: I have tested the disks on my wife's laptop; they all boot without fail.

jailbait · 09-29-2013, 10:43 AM

The DVD may not have a bootloader on it. I can think of two possible reasons why:

The DVD image that you downloaded may not be bootable.

Some DVD burners have making a DVD or CD bootable as an option. Check to make sure that your burner did actually burn the bootloader onto the beginning of the DVD.

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Steve Stites

cascade9 · 09-30-2013, 04:40 AM

With many motherboards/BIOSes you can hit a key to select which device to boot from. What motherboard do you have?

Something easy you can to try is to go into the BIOS and disable HDD booting (just leave CD/DVD and/or USB).

onebuck · 09-30-2013, 06:47 AM

Hi,

I would move the boot order for the DVD/CD to first boot device. Since it seems by your OP that the boot media was created on this machine, it rules out compliance when you booted this media on other machines.

How did you create the media on this machine? imageburn, cdrecord or some other program? How old is this hardware?