dvd drive inoperative after puppy linux 5.0.1 install

[newfer59]

After installing puppy linux 5.0.1 to hard drive on an old compaq presario 1700 laptop the dvd/cdrom drive became inoperative. The bios detects the hardware on boot, but will not boot from a bootable dvd or cdrom. The operating system likewise detects the hardware (LG drn8080b) but does not detect any media in the drive. I came across a thread referring to a bug in ubuntu 8.04 that causes similar symptoms and tried one of the workarounds i.e. using the boot option all_generic_ide but that didn't help. To me it sounds as though the installation corrupted the drive firmware. Any suggestions?

[devils casper]

Hi and Welcome !

Installation of any OS can not corrupt drive firmware. I would suggest you check BIOS Settings again. Make sure to that CD/DVD drive has been set as First Boot Device in Boot section.

[rokytnji]

Any suggestions?

Yep. I would join Murga Linux forums and Post your question Here since it is the Lucid Puppy 5.0 - Bug Reports and Bug Fixes. Just a suggestion though. I run older Puppys like Dingo and MacPup. I consider Puppy 5 still experimental.

[hatebreed]

I agree with both replys. you definately need to go into bios and make sure that your cd/dvd is the first boot device. Make sure that your cd or dvd that you are trying to boot with is booting in anther machine.

[newfer59]

Yes I have checked and rechecked bios settings and tried several bootable disks including the factory restore disk for the laptop. For the time being the dvd/cdrom drive is a paperweight. I did manage to get an o/s installed on the machine by using unetbootin to create a bootable thumb drive and pops on a floppy to get the machine to boot to usb since the old bios doesn't support that. Unless a new drive falls into my lap I won't be replacing it since a pretty good laptop can be had new for $350. Thanks for the suggestions.

[hatebreed]

there is another setting in some bios that says something like enable cd boot that is seperate from the boot order setting. you could get an external dvd pretty cheap also, if all else fails. you should have a usb boot section also, systems way back with 400 mhz processors have this setting.

[newfer59]

As I said, the bios on this machine does support boot from cd/dbd, that's how I installed puppy in the first place, it does not have a boot from usb option. The symptom is not just that it won't boot from the drive, but that the drive is detected correctly (toshiba drn8080) but completely inoperative (i.e no media detected) this symptom has been reported by other users after installs and supposedly relates to a bug in the parent source of ubuntu 8.0.4 but I have not, so far, found a fix for the drive if there is one. The work around I found using unetbootin/pops works and I have 4 gig thumbs to old any distro's iso I choose. <shrugs> I suppose other than the loss of read speed falling back to usb 1.1 there really isn't much of a loss of functionality.

[hatebreed]

does the drive work in linux?

[newfer59]

The drive worked perfectly to do the first install of puppy 5.0.1 but since completing that install has been non-functional in any operating system. The hardware is correctly detected but regardless of operating system or which disk I have in it no media is detected, same with bios on boot. (hardware detected but won't boot from a windows or linux boot cd/dvd)