Dell Optiplex 960 will boot from CD but not DVD media

bootdell

Dell Optiplex 960, stock, BIOS A07, no BIOS updates available from Dell's web site. Has HDD connected to SATA0, and DVD-ROM connected to SATA1.

Machine will not boot from any DVD+R or DVD-RW media in DVD-ROM drive. Will boot from CD-R without issues.

DVD drive spec reads the following in BIOS: HL-DT-ST DVD-ROM DH30N ROM version A101
No firmware update available for this drive from either Dell's web site or any site that I could find.

There doesn't seem to be anything in the BIOS settings that would prevent boot from DVD media. I don't have any commercially made bootable DVD to try out whether this is a burned media issue. Is there any chance at all to get these machines to boot from DVD?

P.S.: Before this gets closed as offtopic please consider that these are workstation machines, there are 25 of them in a lab environment, this is very much a professional and not a consumer question.

Best Answer

I don't believe that drive supports the media you are trying to use. It has only the DVD-ROM logotype. Though I can't find specs for it anywhere, one way you can test this is to see if it can read the boot media when the system is booted. If it can't, you have your answer.

Not all drives can read DVD+R and DVD-RW, but virtually anything you will encounter can read DVD-R, so you might try that as well.

Related Topic