Putting new windows os on used computer

Please make sure its a CD, not a DVD. If the PC is really old, it prolly has a CD drive only, not a DVD drive.

If you put a bootable DVD in a CD drive, it won't boot regardless of the BIOS settings.

 

I don't think you can buy Win 8 on anything but DVDs or install from USB...

but yeah, check to make sure it's a dvd drive... this may be hard if the drive is generic and has no labels. If that's the situation, you'd have to open the case and pull the drive to look at the ID label.

 

Speaking of how much windows sucks, any of you remember when XP was first released ?? talk about major bullshit, you'd set your boot off CD & everything would seem to be loading just fine until you were about 2/3rds done, then it'd prompt you to go online to get the necessary patches needed for successful install, well that was fine except it left you at a point where no supporting drivers for comm hardware were available, it was asking for the drivers it needed to get the drivers it needed.....HUH?? & it left you flapping in the breeze, it almost went to class action suit against Microsoft, pretty fucked up, paid about $200 or so for a liscensed copy for an "almost OS", couldn't believe it

 

And it went downhill from there.

I've been in I.T. since...well, before Win 95, lets just leave it at that. IIts easy to look back on XP as post-SP2 and stable. The dark years for XP till SP2 were bloody painful from the for-a-living side.

 

I used to build 128 node cluster rack servers years ago for Duke & Stanford universities, Pixar pictures, & Industrial Lights & magic (George Lucas), pretty high end shit for that time, we'd do a 72hr burn-in, load Linux & forget about it, at the time we partnered with Nvidia & they'd provide their latest graphics card to run with the burn in.. For the most part it was like watching paint dry, non eventful which is a good thing, only time getting nervous was flashing the servers,especially with unproven BETA apps.. No room for fuck ups as you know..

"Call Duke & tell them that their 275k server is now a doorstop".. bad flashing a crowd favorite...

 

Oh yea, I remember those days well. I worked at *still-NDA* nameless antivirus company in from 98-03. It was so bad during Kournikova, Code Red, and my favorite, Melissa.

We had CNN filming a segment in our office during that. I had a camera lens a foot from my left ear while taking level 3 QA calls helping out the phone guys during the black days of Melissa. Made national TV, but I think they didn't use the audio or give me name credit.


That was a fun job

 

...can you verify that it's a "DVD" drive you are using (look on the tray of the drive, ...it should read "DVD-R" or DVD-RW" or some such thing..

assuming you do have a "DVD" drive, ...then, my next question is, ...when you made the change in the BIOS, did you "save" the changes?... you must "save" the changes, and then reboot the computer, and it should try to boot from the DVD drive (assuming that's what you're putting up front in the boot device order)...

another way, as others have said, rather than changing it in the BIOS (which you'd have to change back after the install is done), ..is to enter the boot device selection menu by hitting <F11> repeatedly and rapidly during bootup... this should give you a "one-time" ability to set the boot device order to the DVD for your install...

 

Take it from an old harware configuration/dead system specialist, if possible you need to start with known-to-be-good devices (CD ROMS/hard drives/video cards,etc that said do you know if the CD drive is even good ?? I say this in regards to PC's new/unknown to you, as far as the boot process goes I'd only enable 2 bootable devices thru BIOS, that'd be first boot CD, 2nd HDD, disable the other bootables, it can help speed things up so the system doesn't hang looking for devices that aren't there, but as mentioned you need a working DVD/CD drive from the get go or you're in for a very long frustrating time... GL

 

Well after we talked my mom, my wife and I went to best but and they bought a new laptop and I'm gonna try to sell the windows 8.1 cd if I can. I never used the product key only opened the wrapper and walmart won't take it back since it's been opened

 

It did have a DVD drive that I put the cd I

 

Well them its safe to assume that drive is dead.. & sometimes plan B(buying new) is the better fix...

 

I used the drive to install the webroot security a couple months ago