Cannot Boot From Optical Drive By Pressing Keyboard Keys

I finally went from Leopard to Snow Leopard (SL) by doing a clean install. But I found I was not able to boot from the install disk by the normal procedure -- restarting and pressing the Option or C keys. Before the SL install, I had a volume structure problem on my HD and tried to use the Leopard install DVD to repair the drive. I was unable to do that by using the normal boot up procedure.
Any ideas on why I can't boot from the optiical drive by pressing the designated keyboard key(s)?

You can load your EFI firmware from here (get the correct version!)
https://support.apple.com/kb/HT1237
And use this method to install it
https://support.apple.com/kb/HT2213
I'll admit frankly I don't know exactly what goes on in the deeper levels of Mac.
I do know this when a Mac first boots it:
1: Does a POST test, memory etc.
2: Runs hardware firmware
3: Runs EFI firmware loaded into special memory from the EFI partition (now erased in your case)
4: Boots OS X
I also know it takes two reboots to get the changes in EFI to "stick" as I've installed programs into EFI for special booting attributes.
SO what I'm thinking here is you cleared your EFI special memory by not haviing a EFI partition anymore and rebooting twice???
Perhaps your firmware wasn't installed correctly before?
I've never encountered a problem like yours, it's exceedingly rare, however Apple does offer the links above for some reason one needs to reinstall their EFI firmware, I only assume it goes into the special memory or on a new EFI partiton on the boot drive it might create.
Sorry but that's the extent of my knowledge, Lion killed my test machine so I can't replicate your issue to fix it.
I hope that assists, please get back if it worked.

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Help diagnos. flashing question mark on monitor, cannot boot from CD drive

Any ideas? This is an older G3 tower which was "souped Up" wtih USB and Firewire cards, memory
Mac froze in midst of work last week. Now only get flashing question mark supermimposed on image of a floppy drive.
Tried to re install system (OS9) but cannot get ANY CD to boot from CD drive. I reboot, hold down "C" Key with CD in tray ( and i can hear the CD drive working). But the tray opens and ejects/rejects the CD).
I now suspect the problem is NOT the OS but rather a hardware issue.
Am I correct in this assumption? what else could this be?
I am trying to help an older gentleman who has no backups and has some important documents on the HD.If I can boot up, might be able to retrieve those itesm. (and get a newer Mac!)

Not the answer,Dale (thanks anyway)
I read that article.
I cannot boot from any bootable CD.
Inserted the OS install disk as well as third party bootable CD.
with CD in the CD drive tray, I restarted and held down the C key.
Mac restarted but the CD tray popped open. Would not boot from the CD.
That is why I posted query
not only do we have the flashing question mark but bootable CDs are not booting this Mac. So I can do no diagnostics, no repair, not salvage of files.
I am trying to understand where the problem lies. am guessing Hard Drive failure but why should CD also not work?

Cannot boot from USB drive!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hi
I have 3-4 120Gb 2.5inch drives which I clone my MacBook Pro to on rotation.
I have always been able to boot from these drives UNTIL NOW!
Suddenly I can no longer boot from them, the boot process starts and gets well through and then the drives all seem to just 'hang'.
The only significant change is that a local Apple support company upgraded my stock 120gb drive to a 160Gb drive.
Any ideas what the issue coiuld be?
Cheers.
Robin

Hi robster,
If the USB drive contains a valid OS you should be able to verify and repair the permissions on that drive, give that a try.
Also i suggest running DiskWarrior 4 on it.
The replaced internal drive should have no effect on this unless some settings got changed when the new OS got installed on it that now prevents the mac from being able to read your USB drive.
Does the USB drive need a driver ? if so is the latest version of that driver properly installed ?
If the USB drive checks out and all is OK maybe a re-install of the OS on your internal drive would help.
For now try disk utility and diskwarrior if you can that could narrow things down

Cannot boot from ext drive after 10.5.2 update

I followed the procedure in tech article 306502 for creating and updating a bootable drive. I am in a PPC Mini environment. External drive is LaCie 160 GB rugged firewire portable with auxiliary power, I created the drive with 10.5.1 and it booted nicely to my two Minis (running 10.3.9 and 10.5.1). I then updated the external system with 10.5.2 from the Apple site and now it does not boot. Sits and spins with a white screen, grey apple, and whirligig. Whirled for 1/2 hour and tried deveral times.
I see this is not uncommon, but there have been no cures posted. One post suggested Disk Warrior. What would I do to with DW to move this problem forward. This is quite annoying, as I rely on being able to move around and boot from this drive when needed.
Thanks for any help.
Fred

after 10.5.2 two days ago, mine booted up regularly. however after the additional leopard graphics update last night, it no longer boots up at all. i have to usethis ****** vista to report the problem. my macbook is right beside me, with nothing but a plain blue screen. occasionaly the mouse cursor appears for about 30 seconds, then dissapears and the screen remains blue. what can i do? if i cant log in apple cant update my mac!!! help!!!

Booting from Optical Drive - Drive omitted from boot list

Hey Guys - I've read similar posts yet none seems to offer a solution. My machine came preinstalled with windows 8 which I upgraded to 8.1 and last week upgraded to Windows 10 with only one issue (display driver). The machine itself has a recovery partition. And the product key is obviously embedding within the motherboard. Obviously with the Windows 10 upgrade I am concerned about recovery issues as I believe the upgrade effectively makes the recovery partition useless (I can only go by what I've read) therfore I downloaded the winddows 10 64-bit iso from microsoft and I attempted to book the iso from my optical drive but the drive was not listed in the boot options. I'm not an amateur in this regard and when I was using 8.1 on this machine i booted from the optical drive a dvd to recover my password. I've included a screenshot to show the set up but I'm sure that'll need to be approved so in the meantime the BIOS boot set up was as follows:CD ROM BOOT - ENABLEDLEGACY SUPPORT - ENABLEDSECURE BOOT - DISABLED UEFI BOOT ORDER - SAME AS LEGACY LEGACY BOOT ORDERUSB CD/DVD ROM DRIVEINTERNAL CD/DVD ROM DRIVEUSB DISKETTE ON KEY/USB HARD DISKNOTEBOOK HARD DRIVE! NETWORK ADAPTER - (network adaptor boot disabled by the way) Now I'm trying to boot from teh internal dvd/cd drive not usb and i have swapped them around it made no difference. If i can post two screen shots i'll also post the boot list. I should also add the the disc itself boots on another machine no problem and the internal optical drive on my HP machine passes all the HP diagnostics. So with all that said - what is the issue. I did contact HP support on twitter who ran out of ideas and suggested i wait on windows 10 updates from microsoft (why? lol) but for me this seems like the bios just inst reconising the optical drive - it's as if secure boot hasn't been turned off. So i start the machine - press Esc then F9 and select boot list and my optical drive isn't listed. FYI - I even tried refreshing the bios image but this has not effect either - so advice please?!

STILL NO ONE CAN OFFER A WORKAROUND FOR THIS? WHERE ARE ALL THESE EXPERTS???

Booting from Optical Drive

Hey, I'm currently trying to upgrade my 13" Macbook Pro (Early 2011) with a new SSD. Right now it still has the stock HDD and optical drive. My question is if I replace the HDD with a SSD and then place the old HDD into the optical drive with the OWC data doubler, can I boot from the optical drive and have all my settings/apps as they were? If so, how then would I transfer everything over to the SSD once it was booted up?

If this is a problem with an OS X Installer Disc then you should take the computer to an Apple service center for repair or replacement.
If this is a problem with the Ubuntu disc, then we really cannot help. You would need to talk with their tech support. However, as far as I'm aware Ubuntu does not make a version that will work on an Intel Mac, as is, because it is not designed to boot or run on an EFI system such as is used by Intel Macs.

New E540 won't boot from optical drive

Hello!
I just bought a Lenovo ThinkPad Edge E540 and I have no interest in Windows 8 nor the HDD the laptop came with. I replaced the original HDD with a Samsung 250 gb SSD and now I want to install it with a fresh Windows 7 which I already had laying around.
My issue is that I can't get the DVD-reader to boot into the disc. I get to a Boot Menu where I can choose between a few alternatives, one being the CD0. When I select it and hit Enter the screen goes black for a few seconds and then returns me back to the Boot Menu. I have tried this with 2 different Windows 7 discs, which I have also tested in my desktop pc to ensure they work correctly. The same thing also happens when I choose "Windows Boot Manager" or the empty new SSD.
I tried setting the optical drive to the first boot order in the BIOS but with no result.
What am I doing wrong? halp.

Is the Leopard disk you're trying to boot from a full retail install disk or a gray install disk? If it's a gray install disk from another Mac that would cause the problems that you're describing. It has to be for the exact same model as yours to have the correct drivers on it. A full retail install disk has the drivers for every Mac on it.

Satellite 1130-z28: Cannot boot from portable drive

my Teac dw 224e drive from Toshiba Satelite 1130-z28 doesn't work. The problem in I've tried to replace it with 3 different types of cd rom drive and none was working.
The led lits, but I can't boot from them and windows doesn'n even recognize them. Is it possible my portable works only with the same kind of CD unit?

Hi
I assume the drive doesnt work because of wrong drive settings.
Its important that the drive supports right (master/slave/CSEL) settings
If the drive is not compatible the BIOS and OS will not recognize the drive properly.
Please note: The notebook drives dont have jumpers like on the desktop PC drives.
You cannot change the settings. You have to use the compatible drive device.

K9A2 Platinum-Won't boot from optical drives

My problem is that I can't get my computer to boot from either optical drive.Both drives work; I can read and write from either drive in windows xp. In the boot order menu neither drive is shown as a boot from device.The boot sequence menu shows all hdd and usb devices but no optical drives.Both drives are recognized in the bios.I wanted to dual boot vista x64 but can't because it won't boot from drive.Any ideas?
QuadCore AMD Phenom Black Edition 9850, 2500 MHz (12.5 x 200) MSI K9A2 Platinum (MS-7376) OCZ Reaper HPC OCZ2RPR10662G 2 GB DDR2-800 DDR2 SDRAM ATI Radeon X1800 GTO (256 MB) WDC WD2500KS-00MJB0 (232 GB, IDE)WDC WD5000AAKS-00A7B0 (465 GB, IDE) Microsoft Windows xp SP 3 Cooler Master 650W+3.3V@28A,+5V@30A,+12V1@18A,+12V2@18A,[email protected], [email protected]

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Cannot Boot from C Drive, Cannot Access Startup Manager

Working on a friends machine,
iMac Intel Core Duo , 17", 1.83Ghz, OS X 10.4.11.
There are 3 users, 2 have Administrator privileges.
It's been acting up lately so I want to run Tech Tools V3.0.4 which came with the machines Apple Care.
If I attempt to run it from the installed Tech Tools I see that the "Macintosh HD Volume is not the startup volume and is not available for repair".
If I try to boot from the Tech Tools CD (restart when holding down "C")I can hear the CD/DVD drive working but it goes right to the startup screen asking which user wants to sign in. When I sign in on an administrator account there is no Tech Tool window to work from, it hasn't booted from the CD.
I have tried restarting while holding down OPTION to get to Startup manager so I can manually pick the Tech Tool CD. I get about one minute of a gray globe and and then back to the user sign in page as above.
I have also tried booting (restart with "C" held down) from the original OS X 10.4.2 Disc that came with the machine, one minute of gray globe, ejects the disc and goes to sign in screen.
Is this a problem that will require repair or am I going about this the wrong way?
thanks, Rob

The slot loading optical drives are really the pits for longevity, almost all of mine have died without much usage.
One posible solution is if you have another Mac with Firewire, is to put the Install Disc for this one in the other one, boot the other one into Target mode...
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1661
Boot this Mac with the Option key held down, see if the Install Disc in the other Mac shows up as a boot choice.
FWTDM turns the other Mac into a big expensive external Firewire Device.

Qosmio F30-140 - Cannot boot from DVD Drive

Dears,
I faced problem in DVD drive, I can't boot from it... actually, it didn't see and CD or DVD when I insert it...
So how can boot from it to reinstall windows?????? Or how can I use external USB DVD to boot from it???
I have F30-140, with updated BIOS...
please neeeeeeed help..

Hi
Sounds like CD/DVD drive has developed a hardware problem.
Usually you should be able to boor from ODD by pressing C button immediately after the notebook was powered up.
You can also press F12 at the beginning. This would enable the boot menu on the screen.
There you can choose ODD as boot source
If this will not function, then the ODD could be defect.
PS: I doubt the BIOS supports booting from USB CD/DVD drive...

Cannot boot from hard drive error message

I bought Mountain Lion from the app store. I downloaded it and launched it. It began to install but when it asked what disk I wanted to install it on and I clicked my hard drive it failed with the message that I could not boot from this hard drive. So, I figured that the installer needed to be on an independent disk. So, I burned it to a DVD and ran the install program again. I got the same message. So, I plugged in an external drive, went to system preferences and set it as the startup drive. Rebooted onto the external drive. Ran the installer from the DVD and it failed at the same point. I tried selecting the external drive but it said that it was the time machine drive (which I guess was equivalent to "NO"). Anyone know how to fix this? Thank you.

Well, LOL, I did that prior to buying the software. It does meet the specifications. I found the solution on the support site. When I googled before I hadn't googled the error message verbatim. Doing so led me to this page: http://support.apple.com/kb/TS3926 where I was instructed to create a tiny partition (128MB) and then run the installer again. No explanation was given as to why, but this did work and I am typing this via the new OS. Thanks for trying to help me baltwo! Best regards.

I had to erase and reinstall mavericks to hd, now i cannot boot up , i get a folder with flashing Q mark and i cannot boot from dvd drive...Ideas please

hi
its a long and sorry story, i have a imac running mavericks
a few days ago i noticed that the dvd drive was ejecting every disc i put in, so i decide to check hd with onyx and reset permissions etc
onyx said the smart status couldnt be checked and i should check hd using disk utility.
i did this and it came up that hd had errors , so i ran the repair facility....it came up with disk can not be repaired, reformat and reinstall mavericks
this i did.
i reinstalled mavericks into mac hd, which took about 3 hrs, i then rebooted and a folder with flashing Qmark appeared, i cant get past this at all.
i have tried to use internet recovery but it comes up with 6002f error, and the dvd drive still does not accept boot disk, so i am at a lose as to how to proceed
anybody got any ideas?
thanks
L

If your hard drive has SMART errors then it is failing and should be replaced. Disk Utility cannot fix SMART reported errors.

Cannot boot from usb drive that is visable

I am trying to install windows 7 onto my x230 from a usb stick. Everything seems fine except here I am sitting at the boot menu, usb shows up properly named, I hit enter and the screen flashes and returns to the boot menu. I've tried a few soltuions from google searches, but does anyone have any quick suggestions?
Solved!
Go to Solution.

Solved! Followed these instructions CLOSELY:
http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/Windows-7-Knowledge-Base/Prepare-an-usb-thumb-drive-to-boot-windows-7-in...

I cannot boot from HDD nor CD/DVD drive - Satellite C

I want to recover my laptop & i need to boot from cd.
I pressed F12 first time & boot from cd but i discoverd that i have put another cd just when i restarted (correctly) i could not boot from cd neither hdd.
When i log in bios hdd was detected but not available in boot priority menu. Just network adapter was there & now i cannot boot from hdd nither cd/dvd. Bios version is 1.30
PLEASE HELP ME

> When i log in bios hdd was detected but not available in boot priority menu. Just network adapter was there & now i cannot boot from hdd nither cd/dvd.
Does this means that neither HDD nor CD/DVD drive appears in the BIOS boot option?
Strange what notebook model do you have?
Did you try to set BIOS to default?
If not do this (press F9 and save the changes in BIOS)

Cannot Boot From Optical Drive By Pressing Keyboard Keys

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