Why can I not boot off non-Windows CD or DVD with Windows 7 installed?

"When you have more then one hard drive, cdrom, etc you only get so many choices to boot from even if you select them properly in the linked image. Make sure the drive you want to boot from is on the top when in the cdrom/hard drive menu.

You can have the First Boot Device CDROM but then have two CDROMs under the boot menu and it's choosing your bluray instead of your DVDRW or however you may have it set up. Unplugging it was probably what brought the correct one to the top."

"Have you tried booting using a USB-based storage device ? You can take almost any .ISO file and set it to make a USB device bootable with it. UNETBOOTIN, which can run under both Windows and Linux can take a .ISO file of any Linux distribution and make your USB storage device bootable with this ISO file, just as if you were booting off a CDROM. If you cannot boot off a CDROM, this may be an alternative solution.

JF"