cannot get windows to install

[boatmoter]

Hi, Im having a problem trying to install win 7 on a HHD, to use as a extra drive, this is the 3rd (formatted) HHD I have tried and all 3 do the same thing.. power the pc on, have the win 7 installation disc in, have boot order set to cd,I get a >> disk boot failure, insert system disk and hit enter.. other than that,it's a blank screen with a blinking cursor in the top left, the pc is a hp,presario, sr1610nx, dual core..32 bit,have also tried my win 10 & win XP installation disk's.. same with all the HHD's and the installation disc, I have a HHD with win xp in it, the pc boots on that and surf's the internet.. Im stumped..,JUST PURCHASE A USED SATA hhd that's wiped,same as my other 3 I have tried, all 4 hhd's have the same symptoms, also tried my usb cd player, the pc bio's are set to boot on the cd player

[WAWood]

@boatmoter 

The one failure all your attempts seem to have in common is that, regardless of the optical disk used, the PC will not boot from it.

But, it will boot from HDDs OK.

That implies, to me, that your optical disk drive is bad.  It could just have dirty lenses (assuming it's the original drive).  To fix that, you would have to go online and buy a CD lens cleaning kit.  That is a disk with fibres on it that brush the laser lens when the disk is turning.

IF that doesn't fix it, you may need to replace the CD/DVD drive -- and finding those can be tough, these days.

[boatmoter]

I also tried my external usb - cd optical drive, it did the same thing

[WAWood]

@boatmoter 

It's been a while, but from what I recall, you can't boot from an external drive.

[boatmoter · Accepted solution]

Hi all, Im a happy camper.. finally found the problem's.. 1 - the cmos battery had less than 1 volt in it,would not remember the boot order, 2- the date was set to 2000 and the day & month was way off so was the time,  3- my player's are cd players in this pc, used one of my DVD players from another pc, started loading right away,double checked the win 7 installation disc,it is a DVD.., thanks all for your suggestions..