Unable to boot with Vista Ultimate SP1 DVD

I bought a Dell XPS 410 desktop which came with Vista Home Premium pre-installed. Its been about 3 months to this system, but now due to some reason I need Vista Ultimate SP1. Hence I downloaded Ultimate SP1 x86 DVD ISO from Microsoft, burned it on a DVD and tried to boot my system. But the only thing appears on my screen is a cursor blinking on Black screen. It’s a new DVD. I pulled it out, cleaned it, and inserted again but yet the same thing. I tried booting my laptop with the same DVD and it works fine there.

To confirm if my DBD drive is not faulty I tried running Dell Restore CD and it boots fine. Than whats the problem with Vista Ultimate burned DVD? Any idea?

Even I have a Dell desktop and I dint faced any such problem though there are 3 operating systems installed on separate partitions. So I don’t think it could be Dell’s partitioning scheme problem. Also it couldn’t be SATA or IDE optical drives. Most probably the cause of the problem may be your ISO which would have got corrupted or burned DVD.

So will suggest you to re-download the ISO again, burn it at the slowest speed on DVD. Later go to BIOS and set the DVD drive as first boot device in the boot order. If you have two optical drives, try inserting and booting the DVD from second drive.

Hello Nurturing, if you have any other desktop then better try replacing the DVD drives. Put another drive on your Dell system and boot the DVD. See if it works.

Thanks for writing:

1. Checked and verified - not the issue...

2. Going to try a different drive soon on the same machine.. good idea..

3. Tried, and still have the same failure.

Dell uses industry standard SATA connections on all of our computers. From what you describe I'm not sure what the problem is, but I would also suggest trying different media to see if that makes a difference.

The first thing that comes to mind is what flavor of DVD did you burn, and what flavor of DVD drive does your system have (i.e., what type of disks can it read)? Most of the drives from are DVD+/-R so either type of DVD (+ or -) should work, but the exact type you used might be making a difference.

Assuming the disk itself isn't the problem (which, based on what you've posted, it probably isn't) what shows up on the monitor when you boot the computer with the disk in? I know it gets to the blank screen with cursor, but does it show anything else before then? What happens if you boot without the disk in the drive?

Larry
Dell Customer Advocate

Does the drive have problems with other store bought disks (not ones you have burned) as well as ones you have burned yourself? If it does, then I would say it is probably the drive. If it only has a problem with disks you have burned then I would be more inclined to think the problem is with the type of DVDs you used for writing.

Larry
Dell Customer Advocate