Computer help: booting from a CD

[Dark_Cloud]

I'm kinda stupid when it comes to computers. Uh how do you boot from a CD? I have a Linux live CD and I wanna boot from it but can't figure out how. Can you help me?

[AtmaWeapon]

There's no way I can give you specific help because it is dependent upon your computer, but I can give you generic instructions that could do it.

If your BIOS supports booting from CD, odds are the CD device is lower in the boot chain than the HD. This is done to hasten bootup; the assumption is that the only reason to boot from CD is to reload the OS and in that case the HD won't boot so the BIOS will move to the CD.

When your computer is booting, it should tell you "Press <F1/DEL/Tab> for system setup". If it doesn't, just keep pressing DEL or F1 over and over again during bootup, usually one of those two takes you to BIOS. Read everything on the screen that appears, almost every BIOS uses a different set of keys so you really need to read it to see what does what. Dig around until you find an item that says "Boot Order" or something like it. This will show you a list of devices. Your computer tries each of these devices, in order, and boots from the first device that has bootable media. You need to manipulate this list so that "CDROM" or whatever is above your hard drive (probably listed as "HDD 0" or "IDE 0" or something like that).

After altering the boot order, be sure to save the settings (the screen will tell you what button), then exit (if it asks you to save before editing, say yes). Now your computer should boot from the CD.

If you couldn't find CDROM or something similar in the boot order list, odds are your computer won't boot from CD (and is very old, at that).