Can't Boot From Bootable CD -- Bios Set Correctly

Anonymous
2015-11-02T05:57:29+00:00

I am trying for the first time to boot my Windows 8.1 laptop from the internal CD-DVD drive. I have a bootable CD in there, and yes, I do have the bios set with CDROM drive as first in the list to boot from. But when I try to boot from the CD, it won't boot, instead the computer gives me this message:

"ATAPI CDROM has been blocked by the current security policy."

(Its actually a DVD drive.) All it lets me do at that message is hit the Enter key to OK the message, and then it boots from the hard drive.

I have no idea where "security policy" settings are or what they are set for. What do I have to do to get this to boot?

This is a Gateway laptop, 2.2 MHz Intel Pentium processor, 4 GB RAM, 64 bit OS, with Windows 8.1 fully updated, and Windows Defender running and fully updated.

I have already looked everywhere I can find, but nothing seems to address this message or issue, as follows:

*I went to Help menu to look up "Security Policy." While the computer is giving me the message about "security policy," the Help menu has no idea what "security policy" is, it just comes up blank!

*I went to Control Panels/System and Security/Action Center/Change Windows Settings/Smart Screen/... All I found in there that might be involved is a setting to block anything downloaded from the Internet until I give administrator access. Well, the booting issue didn't allow me to give administrator access (yes, I am the administrator) when I tried to boot, I only could hit the enter key to OK. Nonetheless, I changed to: notify me but proceed (not a quote).

With that, I tried again, but it still would not boot from the CD, got the same message, so that setting is not it. I changed the setting back.

I see no other setting there that could be related by even a stretch. And the control panels should be dealing with the OS anyway, and this is happening while trying to boot from the OS on the CD, not the hard drive. That is, this is something in the root.

*I then went into bios area (UEFI Firmware) by sweeping in from the right and into Settings/Change PC settings ..., and found a tab in bios for Security. Looking there, there is a list of things, but it lets me access only "Supervisor Password." It was currently set as "clear," meaning no password. I left it as that -- surely I can't need a password just to boot from a CD, and the message I got in trying to boot from the CD did not allow me to enter a password.

Other settings in the Security tab were not accessible. The only ones they included that might be remotely related were:

*Password on Boot, which was set as no password. But again, the message I get with this issue does not ask for nor allow me to enter a password.

*Secure Boot Mode: Standard (It does not let me access to change that.)

Some others also were in the list that are not worth listing, not even vaguely related.

I then went into some other things elsewhere in the main settings called Startup Settings. The only thing in there that sounded the least bit vaguely related was "Enable boot logging." I punched F2 to go into that, but the machine instead restarted, and did not start from the CDROM, same message again. I went back to it, and it is still listed as Enable boot logging, does not instead say Disable - so I don't know if anything even got changed. I did not touch it again, left it as-is.

So, that's it. I've checked all the settings I know about. Nothing about this bit about "ATAPI CDROM has been blocked by current security policy."

I tested with two DVDs that I have booted from in the past on other Windows machines -- they also would not boot, but they did not give me that message.

I note, all three CDs/DVDs are being read fine by the DVD drive once the machine is booted in Windows 8.1 from the hard drive - so the issue is not that the DVD drive can't read the disks.

Where is this "security policy" set?! What do I need to do to get this to boot from the CD?

Windows for home | Previous Windows versions | Performance and system failures

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

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Anonymous
2016-08-24T15:35:47+00:00

Hi,

So everything is back to normal... or at least working to your satisfaction ?

You seem to know more about manipulating your email than I do, but though I may be able to help by describing what my screen looks like !

I know how that kind of conversation goes... Not so much with Microsoft, but with my internet provider sometimes..

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  1. Anonymous
    2016-02-24T00:56:30+00:00

    Hi,

    My thinking on deleting the #4 and #5 partition goes like this...

    If you build a bridge across a river (a link), and then fill in the river... the bridge is still there...

    That is just my thinking, and just a guess... I don't know for a fact that there is a link...

    But that is about the only explanation for Acronis running out of space...

    I don't know if there would be any adverse consequences of deleting #4 and expanding #3 into it or not, but I can just about guarantee it won't fix anything either... 

    Once you delete #4 and #5 and create a Acronis Image of Win 10... if it works...

    You will no longer have room on the external drive to Migrate anything to it...

    I know for a fact that Acronis can Recover\Unimage selected partitions... I do this on a regular basis... Just not on a drive with five or six partitions... Just two or three..

    At this moment, I can just about guarantee that you can replace any partition on your internal HDD with any of the partitions on the 88GB Win 8.1 image... 

    BTW... I don't know if you created the 128MB partition on the external drive when you initialized it or not.... I was thinking it may have come from the internal drive when you migrated it... You said it had one also... I was under the impression that they were both located between #2 and #3...

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  2. Anonymous
    2016-02-24T00:23:33+00:00

    me in capitals:

    There are actually cases where you don't get the 128MB partition... It depends on how the drive is first Initialized... We went over that once before, but I don't remember the specifics... I would need to test again... 

    Basically when you Initialize the drive... If you Convert To GPT one thing happens, and if you just Initialize it to GPT, and not convert, the other happens... My guess without testing is that the 128MB is created when you "Convert To GPT"... but that is just a guess.

    I NO LONGER  REMEMBER IF MY FINAL  TIME WAS TO ERASE AND  INITIALIZE TO GPT OR IF I SIMPLY CONVERTED. EITHER WAY, I HAVE THAT PARTITION.

    I don't know that deleting #4 and expanding #3 into #5 would work... I'm just guessing, but I don't think it would undo what was done sufficiently...

    IF THERE IS NO CONSIDERATION  ABOUT TRYING IT THAT WAY, BY DELETING #4  AND KEEPING #5, I COULD TRY IT, AND IF IT FAILS, MOVE ON.  I GUESS THERE IS A LONGSHOT IT MIGHT WORK, FROM YOUR UNCERTAINTY.  NOTHING LOST BUT TIME IN TRYING --  UNLESS THERE IS SOME CONSIDERATION TO IT. IN THE END, I WILL PROBABLY JUST DELETE #5  AND GET SOMETHING  DONE. 

    BUT I NOTE, I WAS  NOT  SAYING  TO THEN EXPAND INTO  #5, I WAS SAYING DO THE IMAGE WITH ALL BUT #4, IF THE LEAPFROG BIT SOLVED THE ISSUE. IF IT FAILED, THEN DELETE #5 AND TRY AGAIN.

    AND I WAS THINKING, THAT AFTER GETTING THE IMAGE DONE, I COULD SEE IF I CAN RE-MIGRATE THOSE  TWO PARTITIONS OVER --YOU  SAY THEY ARE THE SAME ON WIN 10 AS  WIN 8.1.  AND LIKE YOU SAY, THEY WILL ALREADY BE ON THE IMAGE I  CREATE, AND I  COULD ALSO DO THOSE TWO TO A SET OF DVDS IF I WANTED TO AS A LAST  RESORT.

    HMM, IF I CAN UNIMAGE ONLY  PARTS OF AN IMAGE -- NO, I WOULD NOT  BE ABLE TO UNIMAGE TOTHE SAME PARTITION THE IMAGE   IS  ON, SO I LEARNED A WHILE BACK, SO I COULD  NOT SIMPLY UNIMAGE THOSE TWO A PARTITIONS FROM THE WIN 8.1 IMAGE. NO, WAIT, TIT  WASN'T THE SAME PARTITION, NOW I REMEMBER, THAT IS  WHEN WE LEARNED THERE WAS SOME ISSUE  WITH A SECOND PARTITION -- I WANTED TO TEST  BY UNIMAGING TO THE SECOND PARTITION, AND IT  WOULD NOT LET ME. HMM. IS THAT  ISSUE  PERHAPS  SOLVED NOW THAT I HAVE THE SIX  PARTITIONS  ON THE  DRIVE?! 

    I'm sure you could just Image #4 and #5 later and add them to the first three...

    Acronis recovers images the same way it creates... just check the box for which you want... It remembers the proper size and location of everything... unless you were to recover the image to a new HDD...

    YES, I KEEP  GETTING MIXED UP TOO.  #4 AND #5 THAT WE ARE TALKING ABOUT ARE NOT  THE ONES THAT WILL BE ON THE IMAGE, THEY ARE THE MIGRATED FILES. ALL FIVE WILL BE ON THE IMAGE.  SO I  WOULDN'T BE IMAGING THEM LATER, BUT I MIGHT MIGRATE THEM OVER TO REPLACE THE MIGRATED ONES I DELETE.  IN FACT,  THAT MIGHT BE A CONSIDERATION IN WHETHER TO  EXPAND #3.

    Your Migrated partitions are so messed up now that I doubt if #4 and #5 will even function if you were to recover then back to the internal drive... I would just delete both of them... #5 first, and expand #3 into the Unallocated space...

    If you delete #4 first, my guess is that the link would still exist... 

    WELL, OK. I WASN'T THINKING THAT WOULD KILL OUT THE LINK, I WAS THINKING  ABOUT THIS LEAPFROG  THING YOU MENTIONED --NOT SURE ABOUT THE DETAILS YOU  MEANT  BY THAT. I  WAS THINKING WITH  A CLEAN, DIRECT  LINK, NOTHING IN BETWEEN, IT MIGHT  WORK.

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  3. Anonymous
    2016-02-23T23:46:39+00:00

    Hi,

    There are actually cases where you don't get the 128MB partition... It depends on how the drive is first Initialized... We went over that once before, but I don't remember the specifics... I would need to test again... 

    Basically when you Initialize the drive... If you Convert To GPT one thing happens, and if you just Initialize it to GPT, and not convert, the other happens... My guess without testing is that the 128MB is created when you "Convert To GPT"... but that is just a guess.

    I don't know that deleting #4 and expanding #3 into #5 would work... I'm just guessing, but I don't think it would undo what was done sufficiently...

    I'm sure you could just Image #4 and #5 later and add them to the first three...

    Acronis recovers images the same way it creates... just check the box for which you want... It remembers the proper size and location of everything... unless you were to recover the image to a new HDD...

    Your Migrated partitions are so messed up now that I doubt if #4 and #5 will even function if you were to recover then back to the internal drive... I would just delete both of them... #5 first, and expand #3 into the Unallocated space...

    If you delete #4 first, my guess is that the link would still exist...

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  4. Anonymous
    2016-02-23T23:05:22+00:00

    Hi,

    So far, only two responses in the Acronis forum. Neither provided any elucidation, both seems to misunderstand the situation. The second  seemed to think I had  a hard drive  of only  about  83 GB! He thought that was  kind  of tight for an 81  GB IMage. :) Somehow he completely misread and didn't even see 99.5  GB  of free space. So he wrote a long thing about too tight  a space. I had to point  out that even after adding  the 72  GB Image from maximum compression,  I would still have 9% free space left over. And I'm not booting the  drive, it is only  for storage. 

    Neither of the two have mentioned anything about True Image holding temp files on the partition until after it writes the Image.

    Below, my responses in capitals:

    I considered the idea of deleting #1 and #2 and moving the 128MB partition to the very beginning of the drive... The problem is that I have never done that, and don't know if that is OK, or if there would be some type of adverse consequences...

    The safest thing to do is leave it alone... 

    YES, BETTER TO PLAY IT SAFE THAN SORRY.  AND THE  SPACE INVOLVED IS IRRELEVANTLY SMALL. ITS JUST A HOUSECLEANING THING. 

    That is correct that the File Table needs to be there... or somewhere...

    Most GPT drives I have seen usually have it at the very start or end of the drive... Then everything in between is free to be manipulated... For some reason Gateway didn't see fit to do that... I don't have a clue as to why... 

    OK  IT IS ALWAYS THERE. SO EVEN IF I WERE TO GET A BRAND NEW BLANK DRIVE AND PUT ONLY  A SINGLE A PARTITION ON IT, THERE WOULD SECRETLY BE THIS SECOND HIDDEN PARTITION ADDED BECAUSE IT IS NECESSARY. OK. SO TECHNICALLY,  YOU CAN NEVER HAVE ONLY ONE PARTITION. 

    I don't know how Partition Wizard rearranged your partitions either... Again, I can't duplicate that... That is why I suggested to Delete the partitions and then expand the #3 into the Unallocated free space, or manually resize the partitions one at a time as I had mentioned... It is too late now to do anything about it...

    YES, IT US ANOTHER OF THE MANY  UNKNOWNS. 

    My guess is that whatever Partition Wizard did may cause a problem if you try to shuffle things around some more... My thinking is that if you delete #5 first it will undo anything that could be a problem... Delete the link or whatever... Then #3 would hopefully be back to normal, or at least in a condition it can be resized again without issues... Obviously, #4 would need to be deleted as well...

    GOOD POINT! I WAS NOW THINKING OF MAYBE DELETING  (I GUESS I TEND  OT SAY KILL RATHER THAN DELETE -- KILL IS  MY TERM) PARTITION #4 FIRST, TRYING TO IMAGE AND SEE,  AND ONLY IF I COULD NOT  IMAGE WOULD CONTINUE AND DELETE #5 TOO. I WAS THINKING THAT WITH #4 NO LONGER THERE, IT WOULD NOT INTERFERE WITH ANY FREE FLOW  BETWEEN #3  AND #5, WOULD NOT  BE THERE TO LEAP OVER. YOU NOW SEEM  TO THINK IT BEST TO FIRST DELETE #5.  DOES WHAT I JUST SUGGESTED ABOUT ELIMINATING A LEAP MAKE ANY DIFFERENCE TO YOUR THOUGHTS  ABOUT THAT? LET'S FIGURE OUT THE BEST TO DELETE FIRST,  I'LL DO  THAT, SEE IF I CAN DO THE IMAGE, AND IF NOT  THEN DELATE THE OTHER -- ALTHOUGH  THE MB SIZE OF #4 SURELY WON'T  SATISFY  ACRONIS' LUST FOR SPACE, SO IF I CNAT;DO IT  AFTER DELETING #5, I DON'T SEE WHY DELETING #4  WOULD GET IT  DONE -- EXCEPT THAT THAT'S WHERE IT KEEPS CRAPING OUT. 

    You use the term KILL a lot... is that term that Partition Wizard provides as an option, instead of Delete, or is that a Mac term ?  I wouldn't want to confuse them...

    The reason for Deleting\Killing the partition rather than Expanding, is that Partition Wizard may try to keep the files that are already in the partition.... OR simply not allow you to expand because there is a file there...

    OK. I THINK IT IS  EASIER TO JUST DELETE IT ANYWAY, SO IF YOU THINK THAT MIGHT PROVE TO BE A  BETTER APPROACH, I'M  ALL FOR IT.

    I ALSO AM THINKING THAT IF I IMAGE THE FIRST THREE PARTITIONS,  AND THAT WORKS,  I WOULD SEE IF I COULD IMAGE EITHER OR BOTH OF THE OTHER TWO -- WHO KNOWS,MAYBEE THAT WOULD WORK. IF  IT  DID,CAN BOTH OF THOSE BE USEDTO RESTORE A HARD DRIVE, THE LAST TWO PARTITIONS BEING ADDED AFTER THEE FIRST  THREEE ARE ALREADY ON THE DRIVE? I ALSO COULD DO THOSE LAT TWOTO DVDS, IT WOULD  BE ONLY 4-5 DVDS. AND YES, I KNOW  YOU POINTED OUT I  ALREADY HAVE THEM ONTHE 8.1  IMAGE  -- ALTHOUGH  SINCE I HAVEN'T  RESTORED FROM AN IMAGE YET, I'M NOT SURE HOW ONE ACCESSES ONLY PART OF THE IMAGE FILE RATHER THAN ALL OR NOTHING, BUT MAYBE THAT WOULD BE OBVIOUS WHEN I DID IT.

    As far as Acronis goes... I doubt that Acronis Backup does anything when you are booting from a CD... Acronis Backup won't do anything regardless, if you haven't turned it on and set it up...

    Acronis Backup makes Incremental Images... In other words, it only reimages the part of the HDD that has changed... Somewhere along the line if you want to restore an image, or save the image to a external drive or something, Acronis needs to assemble all of the pieces... That is probably the reason for Acronis Backup using extra space...

    That is also the exact reason I don't use Acronis Backup, Windows File History, System Restore, or anything similar... I have only installed Acronis on a OS that I was going to delete anyway... Just long enough to create the bootable CD and Flash Drives...

    WELL, THAT'S WHY  I EMPHASIZED  THAT INFO WAS FOR BACKUP, NOT FOR TRUE IMAGE. IT APPEARS I WILL HAVE TOTROL SOME MORE AT ACRONIS  TO FIND ANYTHING ABOUT THAT  WITH TRUE IMAGE.  

    I invest in external HDDs, or extra internal HDDs to do FULL IMAGES... I do them at my convenience, rather then when something else decides to use resources I need elsewhere... It requires that I keep a close eye out for deals on HDDs !!!

    As an example using what you have done so far, I would have a minimum of six, and possibly more...

    Win 8 before updates,

    Win 8 after updates and before Win 8.1,

    Win 8.1 immediately after the upgrade completes,

    Win 8.1 after updates,

    Win 10 immediately after the upgrade completes,

    Win 10 after any updates...

    Sorry about the rambling... Just wanted to mention my method, as opposed to what you read on the forum...

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