Bypassing CDBOOT error with Windows 7 DVDs on older PCs

Windows 7 pre-RTM builds are already hugely popular among technology enthusiast. And now, with the public release of Windows 7 Release Candidate, Microsoft advanced another step to bring a super solid operating system on the market that actually works. Since Windows 7 requirements need fairly lower resources in today’s terms, PCs from circa 2005-06 can also run the OS effectively. Unfortunately, it appears that Windows 7 installation DVDs are not bootable in most of these old PCs, making it difficult for a clean installation. As I do have an old PC on my home too, I decided to dig into the matter and find some fixes.

Technically speaking, those yesteryear computers don’t have capabilities built into their BIOS to boot from current Windows 7 DVDs, causing ‘CDBOOT: Cannot boot from CD – Code: 5’ error. While they can easily boot from a Windows Vista disc, seemingly some changes regarding EFI on Windows 7 booting structure shun them to boot from a Win 7 DVD.

Fear not, my friend! Hopefully, it’s still possible to perform a clean installation from Windows 7 disc instead of going through an already installed OS on these old PCs. All you require is a Windows Vista DVD along with Win 7 installation disc. Since, Vista DVDs are still compatible with these old hardwares, it’s possible to boot from them. Follow the next steps for a successful and clean installation of Windows 7,

Step 1. Pop in the Windows Vista DVD on your PCs DVD drive and set the computer to boot from it.

Step 2. Once booted, choose “Repair your computer” from ‘Install Windows’ window.

Step 3. A new window named ‘System Recovery Options’ will open. Click on ‘Command Prompt’ from there to get a CLI based window.

Step 4. Once you get the command prompt on screen, the most important part of whole procedure starts. Just input the drive name of your DVD drive on command prompt, such as D: or E: or whatever applicable. In my case, I typed E: and pressed enter.

Switch to your DVD drive on Command Prompt

Step 5. Get the Vista DVD out of drive and put in the Windows 7 disc now.

Step 6. Back in the command prompt, with your DVD drive selected there, type ‘dir’ (without quotes) and press enter. Now it’ll show the contents of your current Win 7 disc. Change the directory to ‘Sources’ by typing ‘cd Sources’ (again without quotes) and pressing enter. You’re now in the directory/folder where setup files for Windows 7 reside. Type ‘setup’ and press enter. You’re done, the Win 7 setup will just begin from there.

As it can be seen, the process involves of booting the computer from a Vista installation disc and then starting the actual installation of Windows 7 from its own media. It’s just a nifty trick to get the work done without customizing or editing anything on the original Win 7 DVD.

N.B. Newer PC users don’t need to apply this trick beforehand. Just check if your PC can boot from your Win 7 disc. If it does, then the above stated steps are not required.