WinXP wont boot from CD: Gateway 1450 Solo

With the battery not holding a charge, the BIOS is probably reverting back to a boot order that has the HDD as the first boot device. You should boot to the BIOS and ensure that the first boot device is the CD drive.

 

Are you sure it is a good copy of XP, if you burned it, it may be bad. It is either that or the reader is not good on the drive. Those are the only thing I can think of besides the BIOS not being set correctly. Try taking out your HDD and booting from cd and see if that works.

 

Might have to rewrite the MBR since you installed a Linux OS and it probably installed GRUB.

 

My luck with booting to CD's on my Gateway Solo 1450 is strange.... CD's only boot when I am pushing the CD drive in (NOT the button, next to the button for instance). Do this until the CD boots, from the second the computer turns on. Otherwise it will just boot to the HD. You should see the CD LED flash a few times, then stays on, then boots to the CD. Good luck!

 

That shouldn't be a problem, I have booted to an XP CD with GRUB installed.

 

Flash memory can retain data without the need for a power source nowerdays. just look at SD cards and USB sticks (or android phones ) Been a long time since you could pull a CMOS battery out and reset a BIOS.