Problems booting to a system restoration CD
Question:
Hi, small problem I wondered if you can help me. I am trying to reload my computer back to factory settings, i do have a reload cd with my computer, but when i put my cd in the drive it comes up is if the cd is blank, it did work the first time. any help you can give me would be much appreciated.
Answer:
Just so I understand: You have a system restoration CD, but when you try to boot to the CD, the computer doesn’t recognize it? There are many possibilities here, but I’ll address some of the more common ones:
1) The CD is bad. If you’ve done the exact same thing in the past, and the CD worked, and now it doesn’t, there may be a problem with the CD, like excessive scrapes or other damage preventing it from being read by your computer.
2) You need to tell your PC to boot to the CD drive instead of the hard drive. The method to do this varies by computer brand. What you’re looking for is a “boot menu”. This menu is a special menu that appears after you turn your PC on, but before Windows starts. It’s often accessed by hitting the “F12″ key repeatedly, right after turning on your PC. (Note that some PCs don’t have a boot menu, and will automatically try to boot to a CD if you place a CD in the drive.)
3) You’re trying to boot to the wrong system restoration CD, or a non-bootable CD. Often, PCs will come with multiple recovery CDs. They may be labeled “Applications”, “Drivers”, “Microsoft Windows”, “Microsoft Office”, “System restore”, “System recovery”, or may even be labeled with numbers to show you which one to boot to first. If one system recovery CD doesn’t work, and you have another, try the others also.
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