Can't Boot with CD

[MaxHeadRoom]

Ok so I finally got that figured out and disconnected the power and the ribbon to the hard drive.

I now get a message on the screen that says "Reboot and Select proper Boot device or Insert Boot Media in selected Boot device." No matter what I try I can't get past this message. I figured out how to use f2 to get into the Bios and set my dvd drive as the boot drive which is where the CD with Knoppix is, but still no luck.

I am curious, even if I could get the thing to boot, how could I recover my data if the hard drive is disconnected?

Any more suggestions will be deeply appreciated.

Thanks

[Harry Kuhman]

I am curious, even if I could get the thing to boot, how could I recover my data if the hard drive is disconnected?

You couldn't, but the disconnection of the drive was more of a test to see if the drive was keeping you from booting than an effort to recover. It may well be, from what we are seeing here, that the drive has a hardware failure and you are not likely to recover anything from it. However, it is pretty suspicious that you still can't get a CD or DVD to boot, so I would hold off on calling that hard drive "dead" just yet.

I'm at a loss to tell you what to try next. Perhaps one of the others will have an idea.

[Capricorny]

I am curious, even if I could get the thing to boot, how could I recover my data if the hard drive is disconnected?

You couldn't, but the disconnection of the drive was more of a test to see if the drive was keeping you from booting than an effort to recover. It may well be, from what we are seeing here, that the drive has a hardware failure and you are not likely to recover anything from it. However, it is pretty suspicious that you still can't get a CD or DVD to boot, so I would hold off on calling that hard drive "dead" just yet.

I'm at a loss to tell you what to try next. Perhaps one of the others will have an idea.

To recover data from a drive in a problematic PC, the safest is to take it out and mount it in an external USB cabinet. You get them for all actual drive types/sizes.
From the problem description, it would seem most likely that the BIOS is malfunctioning. Seldom worthwhile fixing on older PCs, in my opinion.

[rusty]

You could try resetting the bios by removing the coin size battery on the motherboard for a few moments. Unplug the computer first.

Since neither the CD or the hard drive will boot, I wouldn't necessarily give up on either of them. The fault may well be in the motherboard, so recovery of data from the drive using an external enclosure might be possible.

HTH

[MaxHeadRoom]

Thanks everybody. I have lots to try now. I'll let you know how it all plays out.

Thanks again so very much for all your help, ideas and suggestions.