[Techtalk] CD-ROM drive

Tracey Grrl Geek grrliegeek at elenari.net
Fri Oct 10 15:10:01 EST 2003


And it was said by Hanlie Pretorius-->
> Lately my CD-ROM drive has started behaving erraticaly - sometimes the
> operating systems pick it up, other times they don't.

My husband runs a Win2k box, and I have a dualboot Gentoo / Win2k box.
Both of us have 2 cd drives. We both notice that Win2k sometimes does and
sometimes does not recognize one or the other CD drive. We have different
drive manufacturers, and this has happened since day 1 with Win2k. With
Dan it started happening shortly after he installed his 2nd CD drive.

> The only
> repeatable error that I've been able to identify is that, if I leave a
> CD in there and I reboot, the drive is not picked up.

Thanks for that detail, I'll have to do some experimentation at home.

Out of curiosity, are you also noticing this problem on the Linux side?
Linux on my box has no problems with either drive.

> The drive also
> seems to have slowed down a bit, that is, it takes longer before it
> comes up with the contents of a CD.

I sometimes get that slowdown on the Win2k side but not on the Linux
side. Cleaning the drive was a good idea :)

> Our PC Support people tell me that I should just have it replaced
> because drives are so cheap. I thought that I'd try to get some
> informed (!) help before I do that.

Good thinking :) Throwing money at a problem doesn't always make it go away.

> Does anyone have any suggestions? And how do I get to the BIOS before
> GRUB takes over?

There should be a BIOS screen that appears on your monitor before the
GRUB load screen. If it doesn't go by too quick, it should tell you which
key to press to enter BIOS aka configuration aka SETUP. It's usually Del
or F1 depending on who made your BIOS.

-- 
Tracey
Linux Counter #264789
Imagination is more important than knowledge. It is the preview of life's
coming attractions. - Albert Einstein





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