"press any key to boot from CD or DVD" doesn't always appear at bootup

Wow! That's great you figured out the answer to the problem.

I think I'll wait a while before jumping on the EFI bandwagon.

RCM said:

Hey gregrocker & All,

I did not mean to appear rude in my last post, it was quite late for an old guy like me, and I had been fighting with this unresolved issue for weeks.

Respectfully,
Ron

If the unresolved issue is the topic of the thread, we get back to flaky optics.
As I've said, this has happened to me. Not enough to bother me. I just reboot.
A simple test is to set the BIOS to boot only from the optical drive.
If it always boots, but sometimes spins more before it does, you have your answer.
It's either BIOS timing moving the sequence forward, or an "empty drive" return code telling the boot sequence to move forward.
If it fails with no OS detected, you have your answer. That also tells the boot sequence to move forward.

And the probable solution is a better optical drive. And by better I only mean one that does initial reads faster.
I've had wildly different initial read performance from optical drives.
And sometimes from the same drive but with different disks.
Another possibility is a flaky controller, so you might try plugging the optical into a different controller, depending on what the above test shows.

Thanks Bumpkin. :)

Thanks for the reply Victor S.

A simple test is to set the BIOS to boot only from the optical drive.

I wish it were that simple. The BIOS does not allow that. The only other way would be to unplug both the HDs and try to boot, and that is going a long way to 'look' for a problem that should not exist, esp. on a brand new top-of-the-line computer (and not just one brand new computer, but two).

And the probable solution is a better optical drive.

I have 2 'good' external ODs. Both of them will also boot the 3 CDs that the computer will boot, but not the 4 disks that will not boot, no matter what. As I posted earlier, the disks in question will all boot from both internal & external ODs on my other 2 computers. Therefore I do not believe that it is a question of the optics or their quality. Otherwise I would see fail points with them, even sporadic ones, on my other computers.

As I posted earlier: It seems obvious to me that the problem must have something to do with the 'booting files' that these disks are incorporating.

In finalities it looks like the software producers have to make changes to get on board with the GPT systems in order to get their software to boot with these newest systems.

Has anyone produced some 'new' boot files to incorporate?

In the next few days, when I find the time, I'll be installing a bunch of software, including applications on commercial CDs & DVDs. If I come across more that are not recognized, I'll come back and post about them. Right now I'm happy that Windows 7 even boots at all. (but I still haven't sneezed again lol)

Ron