HP Pavilion DV6500 Will Not Boot from CD

[brockalee]

I'm working on getting a new drive in a HP Pavilion DV6500 (dv6604nr).

I have the boot order changed so that DVD/CD is first, but no matter what CD I put in the drive, all I get is a black screen with a blinking cursor.

I have tested the new drive and memory - both good. I changed the CD/DVD drive, still no go. I have used two different install dvd's for vista, Bart's PE, and a DR. Web CD. Basically nothing is loading.

I tried changing out the memory and using just one stick also.

Eventually I get an "operating system not found" after a few minutes. I feel like I'd like to flash the BIOS, but that's only able to be done inside Windows. I've even tried using a different drive that has Vista already on it - hoping something different would happen...

But same thing.

What would you do next?

 

[arrow_runner]

I ran into a similar problem on a dv6XXX. The only solution I found was to use an external drive.

 

[brockalee]

Did you use the external drive just to install windows from?

 

[arrow_runner]

Not exactly. It's a long story, but an external drive should work for you.

 

[vdub12]

I run in to that every so often. Its normally due to a bad drive but it sounds like you eliminated that as a problem. What I have started doing is installing vista and windows 7 from a USB thumb drive. Its quite easy to setup and installs really fast. I have a 4Gb sandisk cruzer that I switch between vista and 7 with. If vista is on the drive I just delete the files and put 7 on it. Once you partition the drive and make it bootable its easy to switch between OS installs.

Just use diskpart to partition the drive and format it NTFS also make sure you make the partition active. Then in the boot directory on the windows 7 install dvd run the program "bootsect.exe /NT60 $:" where $:=the drive letter for the USB drive. Vista might have that executable to but when I made mine I used a windows 7 disk. Once this is done copy the continence of windows 7 or vista to the usb drive. When you want to switch OS installs just delete the files and copy the the other ones over. Its really easy.

 

[brockalee]

Thanks for the posts guys. I don't know what the issue is/was, but after like 20 times of re-booting, it actually loaded. As soon as I can, imma gonna update the bios...

 

[brockalee]

I appreciate the tip on installing vista onto a usb drive. That's something that I've been meaning to do but just haven't yet. I imagine the installs go a bit quicker too.