Re: Unable to restore from recovery partition

Well, then, how about hitting the F2 key to enter the setup, then change the
boot order in the BIOS setup? Or power on the system, hit the F12 key to call
up the system boot menu, select the CD/DVD drive, and boot?

"The instructions I have found say to boot using six setup floppies downloaded
from microsoft and then use the recovery console to enable booting from the
cd-rom." Whoever told you this or wherever you found, it is a large warm pile
of horse manure, still warm and steaming. Booting from the CD/DVD drive is a
BIOS-controlled function, plain and simple. It has absolutely NOTHING to do
with Windows itself. I cannot believe the misinformation spread by some people.
To illustrate this to yourself, download one of the Linux Live CD ISO images
(e.g. OpenSuse Live, Mandriva Live), burn it to a CD (in a special way, not as
data), and boot the sucker.

Better yet, please cite a reference where you found this gem of computer wisdom.

.... Ben Myers

On Sun, 14 Sep 2008 15:30:07 -0700 (PDT), Fred the Red Shirt
<fredfighter@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:


On Sep 14, 3:35 pm, Ben Myers <ben_myers_spam_me_...@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
A couple of comments:

I suspect that either your Dell "Reinstallation CD" or the optical drive in your
2650 is defective. The 2650 does know how to boot from a CD. I have serviced
them and refurbished them. Good thing, too, 'cause it's not easy to start an XP
install from floppy. In fact, I have never seen XP boot floppies. But they may
exist.

Yes it knows how, but I have read that the feature is often disabled
and must be re-enabled to boot from the CD-Rom. The instructions
have found say to boot using six setup floppies downloaded
from microsoft and then use the recovery console to enable
booting from the cd-rom.

I've gotten as far as booting off of the floppies and running the
recovery console but the instructions do not say _HOW_ to use
the recovery console to enable booting from the CD-Rom.

That is why I went on to try to open the case and remove the
battery from the Motherboard.

Since I can explore a CD on other computers (indeed when I load
it it wants to install right away) I figure the CD is OK.

Device manager tells me the CD-Rom is working properly.
I can disable and re-enable, uninstall and reinstall it, but I
can no longer read a CD with it. When I put in a CD
a little spinning disc appears on the cursor and I can
eject it by right clicking on the CD icon and choosing eject.

At startup in safe mode there is a message that some hardware
will not work in safe mode. I do not know if it is normal for the
CD-rom to work in safe mode or not. Since I can no longer
boot except in safe mode, I do not know if the CD-Rom
works in normal windows.

In recovery console, what does the command:

bootcfg /redirect useBiosSettings

do?

That sounds like it may be what I need to do.
.

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