Strange Optical Drive Problem

Hi All,

I am just having a very strange problem and it is not making any sense.

I have a 6224W and I'm mainly using Ubuntu Hardy Heron on it but from time to time use Windows XP Professional as well. My optical drive has just disappeared from both operating systems. The strange thing is I can boot my computer using a bootable CD in the drive which rules out a dodgy cable connection or dead optical drive. I haven't installed anything or changed my BIOS settings.

Please please please help... This is driving me crazy

 

Did u install any virtual drive softwares like daemon or alcohol?

 

Nope Nothing...

The funny thing is, even if I have installed something in one of the operating systems, how can it affect the other OS?

I can see the drive listed when the computer is turning on right before the OS starts to load so I don't think the system have any problem with detecting the drive properly. But I can't see the drive in the device manager either. There are no unknown devices listed in the device managers so I am completely lost at this stage

 

There have been a number of incidents of disappearing optical drives on the Zepto notebooks. I recall that the Sony ones were particularly problematic.

Did you see t his thread which contains a number of possible solutions?

John

 

I have had this issue numerous times, it has to do with the bios and sometimes with the master boot record (gets modified by any extra os installed).

Try setting the IDE thing to NONE in the bios and rebooting.

Microsoft has some solutions to this as well on their site, but since its both in linux and microsoft I doubt its an OS issue, unless its a diff issue in both OS's

 

Thanks for all the suggestions.

John, I have tried the registry changes and removing the IDE channels from device manager in XP before but none of them worked.

Blackbird, I will check the BIOS again when I'm back home but I have already checked it numerous times last night and couldn't see anything out of ordinary. Let's hope setting it to NONE helps.

I will also try booting from a Linux Live CD tonight and see what'll happen. Although I can boot using the Ubuntu and WinXP install disks, none of them were live CDs so couldn't check much. It will be interesting to see whether I'll be able to see the drive or not after booting the system from a Live CD.

This is the strangest problem I've ever heard/came across I can't understand how it can disappear from both OS at the same time. Furthermore, if the BIOS settings are wrong, how can I still boot from a CD???

 

Blackbird's suggestion will likely work for you as I have had the same issue on a 6625WD and could not understand it either! At the time I physically swapped out the drive with another make but the problem stayed so it's in the BIOS. We are still waiting for this and a load of other issues to be fixed too... Zepto, hello, anybody home?

The irritating thing about this bug is when you need to boot from CD you need to set the type=AUTO, do what you need to do, then after a restart, set the type=NONE. This is neede when you install an OS, make HDD backup images, etc.

Check out #66 in
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=160496

 

I had the same problem in the short time I used Dual-boot.
I simply can't remember whether I fixed it, but as far as I remember it has something to do with the bootloader, GRUB. It messes up the master boot record...

Changing the IDE settings in the bios didn't help me at the time

 

I am suspecting from GRUB as well. I'll try to do a fresh OS install on a USB HDD now which won't need any GRUB installation on MBR. I'll let you guys know if I find out anything else.

 

Thanks for all the suggestions and Tyven you were right It was because of the GRUB, it was somehow messing things up. Reinstalled the bootloader and it is working fine (for now). Have to do a bit more research on this to find out why this is happening. It's pretty frustating tho

Thanks again to all...

 

Thats another issue. As the MBR gets damaged the drive disappears (had this with linux once). Glad its sorted out.

For me I still have a weird problem and I KNOW its because of the bios. Turning the IDE thing to off allows the drive to be recognized in Windows and Linux. Turning the IDE thing to default settings only makes it recognizable in XP not Vista and not Linux

 

Glad I could help