The Boot code for a CD-ROM has to adhere to the El Torito
Bootable CD Specification,
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Torito_(CD-ROM_standard)>
and any way you look at "that", it is nothing like booting a HD... <grin>

Similar problem:
I have one MB that works great but refuses to boot from floppy...
It WILL boot from the emulation of a floppy image on a bootable CD.
At first I thought the controller was bad... Or 5 or 6 old floppy drives...

"Stuff happens"  My (that) BIOS is corrupt, and refuses to flash.
Flash error is: Unknown Flash Type, when running an Award.exe(DOS)
flash from a bootable CD.   It can't ID the Flash chipset (CMOS), so fails
for safety reasons.    YMMV... (The force switch/argument will "not"
work, in addition...)  New MB time for me.

Rick Glazier

From: "Anapro" 
> The IDE channels are NOT defective since both channels will allow access to
> the hard disk as well as booting from the CDROM. I swapped cables, channels,
> and hard disks with the same result each time. The hard disk will boot on
> another computer, and another hard disk will NOT boot on the problem
> computer. There is no error message on booting from hard disk. The cursor
> simply blinks at the top left of a blank screen!
> 
> My conclusion was that there must be a problem with the boot code in the
> BIOS, but I don't know enough about the BIOS loader code to be certain. This
> would assume that the boot code for a CDROM is different from that of the
> Hard Disk.
> 
> At this point, I am not trying to fix the board but just am curious as to
> the failure mode.

                         PCBUILD's List Owners:
                      Bob Wright<[log in to unmask]>
                        Mark Rode<[log in to unmask]>