I downloaded BackTrack 4 Pre Release and burned it to a DVD.
I tried to boot on the DVD but selecting "Boot from CD" on my BIOS boot menu. It starts loading the DVD, but it takes forever. Nothing happens for hours.
I tried the DVD in another computer. I select boot on CD in the bios, presses enter, but it just ignores it and boot windows instead.
I checked the MD5-sum of the ISO I downloaded. It matches the website. I thought that something might have gone wrong when I burned the DVD, so I checked the MD5 of the files on the DVD, and matched them with the files on the ISO-image. They matched.
Am I missing something here? Why can't I boot on the DVD?
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I have two stationary computers. It works on neither of them. One of them is about 3 years old, I don't know the specifications, but I do know it can boot DVDs. It boots any other bootable CDs and DVDs I've feeded it with.
The second computer is a mordern build. I don't have the specs at hand, but it has a 4 month old motherboard. It has a quad core 64-bit AMD CPU, if that would matter.
Verify that the MD5 check-sum matches the one given on the download page. I spent ages trying to get my BT4 pre-final to boot only to eventually realize that the file I had downloaded differed from the actual file by 1 or 2 mb (i.e., was corrupted) and so things didn't work. Use google if you don't already have an MD5 checker.
I apologize for missing that part of your original post, but the symptom you are describing is indeed identical to the problem I experienced - the DVD just always booted to the grub cmd prompt. Sry I can't be of more help, but all I did was re-download the .iso from another host, from which it thankfully turned out not to be corrupted.
How do you check the iso's md5 after you burn it?
Any rate the software you use to burn it with should/may have an integrity checker of some sorts to verify that the process was completed successfully.
I still believe that your problems lies within this.
Again I am still waiting on specs/info on the computer you are trying to boot.
Also let's stick to one for right now. It is nice that you have several to choose from but they will not all be of help right now. Also did/can you try a usb stick?
To be successful here you should read all of the following.
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If you are new to Back|Track
Back|Track Wiki
Failure to do so will probably get your threads deleted or worse.
As the MD5 of the ISO matched the one written on the website, I mounted the ISO with Daemon tools and compared the checksums of the files on the DVD with the files on the mounted ISO.
I burned it with Ashampoo. It said everything was fine. I used the same method as I've used to burn other bootable disks.
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-MA78G-DS3H
Memory: 4096MB DDR2
BIOS: Award Modular BIOS v6.00PG
I don't think anything else matters.
A couple of questions:
Have you ever tried to boot a different Linux Live-DVD, such as Knoppix or Sabayon on these machines?
Does the BT3 Live-CD work for you?