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. Continue reading →