HP G72 laptop won't boot LiveCD

[SpinheadMickey]

  Hey everyone..

 I'm trying to dual-boot a new HP G72 laptop. My problem is the DVD drive won't boot to the LiveCD. I've used this same CD to install 2010.12 on several other computers both before and after trying it on this G72. I've gone into the BIOS and set it to boot ONLY the DVD-ROM - still no dice. I've even tried a LiveUSB...boots on 2 other machines but the G72 refuses to. Any ideas?
 This G72 belongs to an elderly woman whose last computer ran Win98 and she's not liking Win7. She has seen Linux on my computer, and now she would rather have it than Win7. So I'd really like to help her out, but what gives?
 I even went so far as to re-download the ISO 2 days ago & re-burn. That didn't work either and this lady is getting tired of hearing how much better Linux is.  HELP........PLEEEAAASSE!!!

[AS]

Hi,

check if this can help you: http://www.pclinuxos.com/forum/index.php/topic,86801.msg722031.html#msg722031

AS

[SpinheadMickey]

   Hi, as
  It doesn't give me the option. It just completely ignores the LiveCd and boots Win7. When I set the BIOS to disable all boot devices except the DVD-ROM, it said 'Operating system not found'. I should also mention that this same DVD drive was used yesterday to install software, so the drive itself seems to be OK.

[AS]

It just completely ignores the LiveCd and boots Win7

double check BIOS settings, try to reset BIOS settings to factory defaults, try to check HP website for possible BIOS updates and/or for support,
retry liveUSB... verify PCLinuxOS ISO md5sum ...

AS

[SpinheadMickey]

  Thanks, as

I've been thru BIOS about 20 times, HP has no BIOS updates for this particular model, and MD5 sum matches. I'll give the LiveUSB another try, though. Maybe post in HP forum...

  Maybe it'll end up being something silly I'm overlooking...

[Old-Polack]

  Hi, as
  It doesn't give me the option. It just completely ignores the LiveCd and boots Win7. When I set the BIOS to disable all boot devices except the DVD-ROM, it said 'Operating system not found'. I should also mention that this same DVD drive was used yesterday to install software, so the drive itself seems to be OK.

At what speed did you burn the LiveCD?

I always burn at the slowest speed allowed, usually 4x, and don't have this problem. Yesterday I burned a disk for someone else, on a disk supplied by them, at 8x, the slowest allowed by the media disk, and the drive that did the burning couldn't see/detect the burned disk at all. Like you, I got a "no media found" error message when trying to boot from or mount it. I inserted it into the tray of the computer to install to, and it saw the disk, booted to it and successfully installed from it. It's still a no show on this computer that burned it.    

I re-burned from the same image to a CD-RW at 4x, and both computers detect and boot from this disk.

[LLVMech_63]

I have 2 G72-B66US hp's both dual booting win7 and pclos ... I installed from a usb key made with unetbootin on both laptops ... hope this helps

[SpinheadMickey]

  Sorry it took so long to get back, things have been really hectic lately. This disc was used to install both before & after trying on hers. On 5 other machines the disc gave me no problems at all. I finally used LLVMech_63's suggestion of unetbootin on usb stick - everything went great & she LOVES PCLinux, vows to never use Windows again. Even better, her son-in-law (who bought her the laptop) was having issues with Win7 (said he hates it, even though he is a 'Windows guru'. He tried the LiveCD, but had the same problem I had (his is also G72). I sent him the LiveUSB we used on hers, now he's PCLOS too. He said 'this OS is everything Windows 7 was supposed to be. I love it.' Kudos to Texstar and the dev team - keep up the good work!