Windows refuse to boot from CD - can't reinstall Windows

Hello,

So I've been sitting up all morning now (06:00 AM) going nuts about this Windows installation and decided to ask for help.

I just got my new hard drive up and running and moved all my pictures/videos/music and steam games to my new one, then formatted the old one without thinking.

My Windows OS is installed to my SSD, I then changed the location of the user folders to the hard drive to save space and did various other changes. When I then formatted the hard drive I used to have everything on I messed up the registry and Windows is giving me error messages and behaving weird saying the location is incorrect etc. I tried manually changing the locations and it worked to a certain degree, but I'm still lacking most folders in the user library and I can't perform actions such as changing my user picture because the registry is broken now.

I decided the easiest way to deal with this would be to put my Windows CD in the tray, reboot my computer and change bios settings in order for it to boot from the CD and do a clean install of Windows (as I have done so many times before in my life.) However, it just keeps booting from the SSD over and over again, no matter what I try. I even disabled all other boot modes except CD-ROM, it won't work.

I am really frustrated now and would like some assistance. I have no idea why it wouldn't work now when it has worked so many times before. I would not like to hot-swap the SSD while the computer is running or anything like that in order to get into the Windows installation screen unless there's no other way.

Please help!

This is why it's best to link your User folders by copying them to the data drive, then rightclicking each to add to the related Library - Include a Folder - Windows 7 Forums.

You can then delete the C User folder content once you confirm each one appears from the data drive in it's library.

For now I would try restoring the User folders to default location: User Folders - Restore Default Location - Windows 7 Forums. These are System files that don't much like being moved.

Try setting SSD to boot first, then trigger DVD to boot using one-time BIOS Boot Menu key given on first screen. Does it prompt to Press Any Key to boot DVD? If not then clean the DVD or burn another using ImgBurn at 4x speed. If that fails write the latest official ISO for your licensed version to flash stick using Universal USB Installer

Hi. Thank you for the quick reply gregrocker.

At first I tried exactly what you said - restore default location, include in library etc, but the registry was still messed up and I couldn't change profile picture amongst other problems.

I managed to solve the problem. There are two things that might have solved it in my case - changing AHCI mode to Native IDE in the BIOS or me spamming the F9 key during the BIOS screen. If it was the second one that fixed my issue and allowed me to choose to boot from CD, the reason why I didn't see it earlier was because the BIOS boot screen disappeared in a tenth of a second when I rebooted my computer. I had to actually shut it down entirely for the boot screen to appear for a couple of second the next boot. I managed to delete all the contents of the SSD while in Native IDE mode, then I changed it back to AHCI and performed a clean installation of Windows. Everything works fine now.

If anyone else ends up here and has this problem you can try my fix.

Thanks for reporting back.

If everything is fine now you can mark the thread Solved at top.