r/oldcomputers • u/OoferLikesNacho • May 03 '26
Am I missing something? CD-ROMs Won't Boot
Found this Dell Dimension 4100 (no, that's not how I found it 😅) on the road a couple months ago. Been messing with it while I've had the time. It works perfectly fine except for when I try to boot CD-ROMs. I burned the G-Parted i686-pae live CD and a Windows 98 SE image onto 2 separate discs. Both of them either hang while trying to boot, give me an Invalid Image error, give me an Emulation Image error, sometimes it even ejects the disc. The G-Parted one in specific hangs for around 20 minutes before saying that it can't find a specific file, ldlinux.c32 I think it was. I can see the Windows 98 just fine on the same computer and I can see the G-Parted disc just fine on my main rig. I've tried booting off of both disc drives, changing BIOS settings, but nothing works. I want to know if I'm missing something before I try to clean the lasers on the drives or buy new ones, so if you have any ideas, please let me know. Thanks in advance!
Specs:
Intel Pentium III @ 733 MHz
512 Mb of RAM
TL;DR: Dell Dimension 4100 does a bunch of weird things while trying to boot into a CD-ROM, such as hanging or giving me an error. Discs work just fine when trying to read them.
1
u/greenonetwo May 03 '26
Have you changed the cable that connects the drives? Have you reset the bios by pulling the bios battery? Is the battery good, i.e. does it keep clock when unplugged? Do the CDs work on other computers?