This is just a random idea, but could you have burned the cd at a speed higher than the optical drive can read? I burn all my software at 4x because i know it will then work in any and every machine. - Christopher Hawker On 9/15/11, Keith Keller <kkeller at wombat.san-francisco.ca.us> wrote: > Hi all, > > I'm having a bit of an issue booting the full 5.7 install CD on an older > machine. I downloaded the ISOs earlier today, checked the sha1sums, and > burned the CDs with no reported errors. But when I try to boot, the > isolinux banner comes up quickly, but then instead of the boot prompt, I > get a completely blank screen. After 30-60 seconds, I get a message in > purple, the exact wording I don't recall, but something like "can't > boot, please restart". > > Many years ago I put CentOS 4 on this machine, so I know it can boot CD > media, and earlier today I booted an older UBCD, so I know that it can > successfully boot from CD at the present time. (I didn't have time to > test the CD I burned in another box; I will do that next time I have the > CD.) > > What other options do I have for getting 5.7 on this box? I have a few > ideas: > > --do some troubleshooting with the 5.7 CD. I don't really know how to > go about this, and there's no guarantee it'll end up with being able to > boot in the end. > --perhaps an older CentOS 5 ISO will work better? Testing this will be > fairly quick but is not sure to work. > --remove the system disk, put it into another system that is known to > boot the 5.7 CD, install there, then put the disk back. This could be > somewhat time consuming (the machine is in a rack, and the system drive > is buried in the chassis, not hot-swappable), but is pretty sure to work. > --try to boot from USB. As I said, it's an old box, so I'm not sure it > supports booting over USB media. There were no "boot from USB" options > in the BIOS; I could try to flash the firmware, but that seems excessive > for this sort of issue. > > Other thoughts/suggestions? Any ideas why I'd be seeing this particular > boot behavior? It's not something I've seen before; either booting > fails before even reaching isolinux, or the kernel panics on finding some > exotic and/or broken piece of hardware. > > --keith > > -- > kkeller at wombat.san-francisco.ca.us > > -- If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to call me on +61 478 241 896. Regards, Christopher Hawker