Compaq presario can only boot from hard disk

Compaq presario with Vista. Trying to do a clean install of windows 7 on comapq presario f500. Problem is the machine will only boot from hard drive. Cd drive works fine just can't boot from it.
Windows 7 install disk won't boot. Windows xp install cd won't boot. In bios setup I've move the dvd/cdrom drive to top of boot list still no luck. So I got tricky booted from vista and starting windows 7 install cd from windows explorer. Install hung part way through and I had to turn off the computer. No I can't boot vista and have an incomplete install of windows 7 which won't boot. Not even safe mode. When you boot hit Esc the boot menus only shows notebook hard drive as an option.

I've also tried unpluging the battery to clear out cmos no help.

Help I've trying to upgrade for a relative. Now the machine is uselss.

Download and write the latest Win7 official installer for your licensed version to flash stick from Steps 1 and 2 here which will also show you how to get a perfect install.

If you have files to rescue from Vista you can Copy & Paste - in Windows Recovery Console.

Otherwise boot the flash stick, choose Custom install, delete all partitions and create new partition(s) as desired, format and install.

Also note that removing the battery (the one that you have to charge to run the laptop) will likely not clear the BIOS. What model is it?

The battery I was referring to is the one that maintains the clock and cmos settings.
When I unpluged for 5 minutes the date and time got reset. Not sure about the bios though.

I have made some progress. Gregrocker's suggestion seems to have done the trick. I downloaded a windows 7 premium 32 bit iso file and the tool he referred to and created a bootable usb flash drive. I moved that option up on the boot list and was able to boot from it and do my windows 7 clean install. So far all looks well. I have not finished testing every yet. Still bothers me that you can't apparently boot from the cd/dvd drive though.

Thanks for all the help
Chuck

Well that's good news. Keep following what Greg has posted to fix the install as there's a good chance the initial installation was damaged.

When you've verified all's good then you can look at CD/DVD boot issues.

I would expect removal of the CMOS battery you referred to in your last post would cause loss of BIOS clock setting, but likely did not truly clear BIOS settings.

I'm still having a lock up problem after install of windows 7 from usb stick. I've tried everthing I can think of. The machine was never certified by HP to run on windows 7. I'd like to try installing xp or vista unfortunately I still can't get it to boot from the Cd rom drive. I've since found out that the current cd/dvd drive is not the one that came with the machine. I still think there may be a bios issue. It just won't list the drive as a bootable option on startup. I must be doing it right because I went in and made the usb stick the first boot choice ahead of the hard drive and it worked. Just won't work for the cd drive.

I'm about to give up on this. Any last suggestions.

I'm pretty sure that when you pulled that CMOS battery and observed the BIOS clock getting reset you successfully cleared everything necessary. The only thing left may have been data stored in NVRAM (like BIOS passwords). I think my statement about this in my prior post is incorrect as it is written.

When you go into the BIOS, select the System Configuration menu and then select the Boot Options submenu, do you even see the CD-ROM Boot option? That's the enable/disable boot toggle. A little further down you should see the current default boot order. Is ATAPI CD/DVD ROM Drive listed?