# CDROM drive fails after Gentoo 1.4 rc4 install

## mozard

Hi, I've recently installed Gentoo on a Dell Optiplex GX260, which has Windows XP come factory installed.  Got gentoo all up nicely, then grub, everything went without a hitch until one fine day i decided to listen to a music CD.  I discovered that i couldnt mount /dev/cdrom!

Rebooting and looking at my bios config, what should be a "CDROM DRIVE" entry in the secondary primary drive turned out to be an unknown device!

I booted back into Windows XP and Gentoo and the drive was not present too.

I took my drive out to test on my colleague's Dell Optiplex GX260.  Fine it didnt work.  Then I fixed up his original setup and discovered his cdrom drive failed in bios too!   :Shocked: 

Is that fishy or what?   :Sad: 

I got Dell to deliver 2 cdrom drives to replace the faulty ones.

Ok the new ones work for a while.  Then the same thing happened to me on my computer.  My colleague's one works fine for more than 3 days already!

I'm almost at my wit's end.  :Confused: 

Has anyone got a similar problem or even perhaps a clue to this problem?

Any help appreciated, thanks!   :Smile: 

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## grooveman

Sorry if this is a stupid question, but did you look at Dell's site for a bios update?  Or perhaps a firmware upgrade for the drives?  Will other drives work there?  Will those drives work in a different model (preferably non-dell) machine?

And... 

Maybe you didn't mean it the way you phrased it, but you do not mount audio cd's.  It just reads them from the device (e.g. /dev/cdroms/cdrom0).

I appologize if this is not helpful, but experience tells me that one should start with the simplest areas first.

chris

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## mozard

 *grooveman wrote:*   

> Sorry if this is a stupid question, but did you look at Dell's site for a bios update?  Or perhaps a firmware upgrade for the drives?  Will other drives work there?  Will those drives work in a different model (preferably non-dell) machine?
> 
> And... 
> 
> Maybe you didn't mean it the way you phrased it, but you do not mount audio cd's.  It just reads them from the device (e.g. /dev/cdroms/cdrom0).
> ...

 

Haha dont worry about it, im stuck in a stupid situation anyway.    :Razz:  But im wondering if i could flash the bios of the cdrom drive if i cannot even get it to eject when i plug in the molex power connection minus the ide and audio cable? Ive somehow "spoilt" 3 drives the exact mysterious way.

And...

Wow thanks! I didnt know i dont have to mount audio cds   :Mr. Green: 

Any chance that my Gentoo installation might have screwed it up?

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## grooveman

Hmm...  

It does not seem likely at all that Gentoo could have "screwed them up"... 

If you cannot even get an eject with power alone... I almost have to wonder if your powersupply is at fault, or the voltage regulator on the mobo... or even the wiring in your house...  I wonder if the drives were getting power fluctuations that fried them.  In any event, it sure sounds hardware related to me...

The bios flash would be for your mobo, btw, not for the drive.  A firmware update would have been for the drive, but if they are not detected this would not work obviously, unless you have found that the drives will work in another pc.  Firmware updates for optical drives tend to be far and few between, but they do occur once in a while.  Bios updates, on the other hand, happen all the time -- especially with dell.

You sure you have your jumper setting on the drive set properly?  I would not keep them on cableslect.  I have had a few optiplex computers come in that had flaky ide problems.  I found taking them off of cable select, and setting them to either master or slave, helped with them.

I am sorry to hear you are still having problems, I know how frustrating that can be!  My last mobo shipped with a bad bios, and I was tearing my hair out trying to figure out what was going on!  I returned it, got the new one and  bingo!  Everything is fine and dandy.

Anyway, Good luck on your quest!

Chris

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## mozard

Power fluctuations!  Could it mean that my power supply unit is faulty?  I've spoilt 3 drives and I'm onto my 4th now, no problems so far.  

Only difference now is that I've reformatted the default dell hdd that came with winxp default installed.  Interesting to note that the hdd had 2 partitions - a FAT32 formatted partition for dell stuff and the NTFS for winxp.  I've since reinstalled Windows 2000 on it and redid my Gentoo installation on the other hdd (with the latter a primary partition).

The CDROM drive still works after booting into win2k and back to gentoo.

Is there any possibility that the default OS winxp installation with the dell partition could have caused the problem?

My colleague straightaway killed his default dell installed partitioned and installed gentoo over win2k.  It was only when i tried to test my drive in his computer (which didnt work) then replacing his drive then i discovered that his once working drive didnt work too.

This is mind boggling man, sure hope I can find out the reason behind the deaths of my 3 cdrom drives   :Wink: 

About the cable select thingy, i discovered that if i switched the hdds around to master and slave, they couldnt be recognised so i left them on cs instead sigh

Thanks for the info about firmware updates for the drive and mobo but im curious: what was your problem with the faulty bios?

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## richard.scott

I have just booted the AA Games cd and managed to wack the reset button and now have the same problem. The cd drive I have seems to think its not got any power. It was all ok 5 min ago and now its dead  :Sad: 

I have swapped the power from my CDrom with my CDRW and still have the same problem, so its not a power fault. I do not believe that it is a cdrom fault either as I have had the same problem at work with a different make of cdrom drive too. 

I also thought that one had died as it had no power and the eject would not work, it wasn't see by the bios   :Sad: 

It seems that somewhere along the lines Gentoo is locking the cdrom into a mode that will result in a failure of the device if its not unlocked. BTW, I've also had this happen with the standard gentoo install cd too.

Is there a fix for the dead cd rom drive? I know its not the fault of the hardware due to it being old as its only a few months old.

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## mozard

 *Quote:*   

> I know its not the fault of the hardware due to it being old as its only a few months old.

 

My cdrom drives are brand new btw

Well i think we're in the same boat   :Crying or Very sad: 

I wonder if anybody else has similar problems - wonder if the admins would make this into something like a semi-important sticky for pple with similar problems to easily notice and post their problems/solutions.

What's your model of your drive and computer - dell too?

Your theory of the cdrom drive being locked into a certain "dead" mode is interesting.  I'm not sure about the innards of a drive, but if that's the case, is there a way to reflash the bios to reset this "dead" mode if one exists?

 :Confused: 

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## dolbz

Interestin that I came across this thread. I wasn't thinking it was at all Gentoo's fault but my cdrom has stopped reading and as far as I can tell it's since I played AA. their's still power and I can eject and stuff but mounting will no longer work  :Sad:  I get:

```
mount: block device /dev/cdroms/cdrom0 is write-protected, mounting read-only

mount: No medium found

```

And i've read on other forums that this can be due to hardware problems. It is in my case as I can't boot cd's anymore and windows won't open them either.

I really hope I dont have to get a new one  :Sad: 

Just to let you know.

Dolbz

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## drobbins

Hey guys -- sorry to hear that your CD-ROMs are dying! That's very strange. The only thing we do on the GameCD that could be considered tweaking with the drives is to use hdparm to set the spindown timeout on the CD-ROM to the maximum value. But this is standard stuff and shouldn't kill the drive unless the drive firmware is majorly buggy. Of course, maybe that's the case for some drives. But to be safe, we'll remove this from the next build of the AA GameCD.

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## mozard

Seems like everyone here's having problems with the AA Game CD.  I experienced problems with the original Gentoo 1.4rc4 installation - I wonder if there's any similar tweaking done by the install disc?

My cdrom drive's LG, which came from a Dell Optiplex X260.

Thanks for all the kind attention, guys   :Very Happy: 

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## MasonMouse

Ok, that's very weird. I downloaded the AA game CD and booted it and the CDROM failed halfway through loading and hasn't worked since. It's also a Dell computer. Even with just power plugged in and no IDE cable, it acts as if it's not getting any power. Can software really do that?

Update: I replaced the LG CDROM in the computer with a different brand and it works fine (haven't been able to try the game CD yet though) so it's definitely the drive that died and not something else. Sounds like a possible problem with the LG drives Dell uses. Has anyone else had this same problem with a different brand of drive?Last edited by MasonMouse on Tue May 27, 2003 1:03 am; edited 1 time in total

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## double00

My DELL Laptop has done the same. The disc just won't spin up.

Has anyone managed to get it fixed yet?

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## Lord Funky Biscuit

I'm using a Dell Optiplex @ work, and have installed Gentoo as my OS of choice. I've managed to kill 2 CD-roms so far, can't remember the exact circumstances though. I should get off my arse and get this second one replaced!

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## skyrat

Had the same problem with LG drives in my PC in university when using the LiveCD installation. I'm hoping it just trashed the firmware and reinstalling this will fix the problem. Has anyone tried this already  :Question: 

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## Lord Funky Biscuit

Well, I scored my second replacement CD-Rom, and within 30 minutes, it was fried too! Curse me and my desires to actually MOUNT a cd... system froze, reboot, and no more CD-Rom #3. Dell tech dude should be here tomorrow to do stuff.

All 3 have been LG 48x CD Roms...

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## Solution_9

I have the same problem as most people here. I have a Dell computer with a LG CD-Rom. The CD-Rom failed after the installation of Gentoo was complete.

I was puzzled for a couple of hours. Then I just forgot about it. 

Unfortunetaly for me.. my Dell warranty ran out 2 months ago  :Sad: 

If anyone has any fixes for the "dead" drives.. PLEASE.. PLEASE.. WE NEED HELP!!

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## xr31Daisy

OK, it looks like I've hit the same problem :

Dell inspiron 8200, with a Hitachi-LG DVD/CDRW Combo drive.

I tried to reinstall my gentoo with a 1.4_rc4 Live CD, after frying my filesystem with an unsuccessful attempt to get kernel 2.5.73 running. I was using the basic CD, starting from stage 1.

I successfully completed the basic install, using a 2.5.74 kernel, and then hit this problem.. Since the problems with the 2.5 series were piling over my head, I decided to start over ( and maybe use a good ol' reliable 2.4 ) :

I never could boot using the CD again. I'm calling Dell tomorrow.

In the meantime,  my filesystem got corrupt again.

I've also had a look at Dell's site, and found a firmware update for my drive, but it doesn't seem to work. And the site doesn't say why this firmware update is needed/useful.

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## Ziraku

Hmm. This is quite dishartening.   :Sad:   I'm looking forward to receiving a new hard drive that I can install gentoo exclusively on, instead of sharing a drive like it is now.

Is anyone else able to replicate this on another drive that's not dell or LG?

I'm thinking of holding off this install or using one of the older cds again.

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## StuBear

At work we recently recieved 5 Dell Optiplex Gx50 and within 2 weeks we had sent 4 of the hdd back for replacement - that is without installing any new software on them at all - just using them with OEM software, One of the replacemnet drives lasted 8 days before dying again.

All of the drives did the same thing - boot up and no drive erros, check bios and it states "Unknown Device" - also because of this the CD on primary slave isn't recognised either.

Just received 4 more Optiplexes this morning - supposedly Dell has fixed the problem - hope so!!

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## mozard

 *StuBear wrote:*   

> At work we recently recieved 5 Dell Optiplex Gx50 and within 2 weeks we had sent 4 of the hdd back for replacement - that is without installing any new software on them at all - just using them with OEM software, One of the replacemnet drives lasted 8 days before dying again.
> 
> All of the drives did the same thing - boot up and no drive erros, check bios and it states "Unknown Device" - also because of this the CD on primary slave isn't recognised either.
> 
> Just received 4 more Optiplexes this morning - supposedly Dell has fixed the problem - hope so!!

 

Your CD drive - is its eject button working when you plug the power connector to it?

Has anyone any clue to fix this thing like updating the lastest firmware?

I think some hardware component is fried tho   :Crying or Very sad: 

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## lloyd

I have a similiar story. Our company just ordered 7 new dells last monday. We have had two failures alread.

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## mozard

I wonder if this problem is fixed in the 1.4 FINAL?

Any comments, moderators or developers?

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## Vaseem

Hey guys,

I m also the victim of "CD drive crashes" after installing Gentoo from LiveCD. I have spoilt 3 CDs so far   :Sad:  . I m using Dell Optiplex GX110. I m a RedHat user and after seeing the reviews about Gentoo, thought of giving it a try. The CD drive  worked through the install process. But after a day or two the first CD was dead (no power). I swapped the CD from another Dell GX110, booted XP, CD was fine. Then I booted RedHat 9, the CD was still working fine. When I booted Gentoo, the CD was "dead" and after that it never worked even on any other branded or non-branded machines    :Crying or Very sad:  .

Then I tried a 3rd CD from another Dell gx110 and now am frustated to experience the same treatment by Gentoo. 

I have fried 3 CDs in 2 days, and turned to the list for some help. Never knew there are so many victims !!!   :Evil or Very Mad: 

I was thinking about "converting" to Gentoo from RedHat, but  it is discouraging ...

Apparently Dell is a common factor with all the victims.

Don't know what to decide about Gentoo now....  :Sad:   :Sad: 

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## mozard

Seems like Gentoo's not the only distro affected.

http://slashdot.org/articles/03/10/25/1737244.shtml?tid=137&tid=147&tid=187

Mandrake 9.2

Devs out there, any comments?

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## stonent

Here's my question... Why doesn't Mandrake at least give some explanation as to what happened? Is it just probing for the drive that kills it? Why did LG design their drives so poorly that crap like this could happen?

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## mozard

Latest update, from slashdot, about Mandrake:

"The problem was that the kernel would send a FLUSH_CACHE command to the LG CD-ROM drive which would make the drive inoperable by overwriting its firmware....A new kernel (2.4.22-21mdk) has been released that fixes this problem in the kernel, although the CD-ROM devices are still not up to specification. New CDs and ISOs will be available shortly to correct these problems; they will come with the new kernel."

Taken from

http://slashdot.org/articles/03/10/31/2214251.shtml?tid=167&tid=188&tid=192&tid=99

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