Has been quite awhile Im not sure if you found a solution to this problem or managed to boot from a network so I thought I would add my two cents. I have not dealt with your device in particular but I have experienced similar situations. If you are trying to boot from a CD that is attached via a pcmcia slot it will not work except on very new systems. The bios does not initialize the pcmcia slots, they usually don't start working until your operating system is loading. What I find works in many cases is to slave the drive into a regular tower and install an operating system onto it manually or install a disk image. After you switch the drive back to the original device you usually get some error messages but windows boots and then you can sort them out from safe mode. Many companies who sell surplus equipment feel they are protecting the previous owner by deleting operating systems from the hard drive. Really the data could be retrieved anyway if you were determined. I don't know why anyone would bother as I have bought several off lease computers that had all the companies stuff still on there and all their programs installed. I'm sure mundane business data and old company memos are just a gold mine for evil doers /sarcasm. Most large companies maintain their sensitive data in a central server database not on employee terminals.