no cd on startup

[Tom Daly]

I've had this question up on the Kubuntu forum for a couple of days now, 
with lots of readers, but no takers ...

9.04 / K4.3.2
I have a cd drive as primary slave, burner as secondary master

for many  many months, on startup the Kubuntu logo and blue progress bar 
show up then gag at about 1/3 progress.  It then flips to cli, reports 
that the burner doesn't exist, then continues on, gui appears and away 
we go.

quite by chance I've discovered that if I have cd's in both drives on 
startup, there is no gag, no cli break, and the start goes through in 
about half the time. (I've tried this with a cd in one or the other, but 
that doesn't work- has to be in both)

so I'm assuming there's something going on with those devices not being 
mounted during startup?? and that's there's something I can do to fix it??

question for all:  what is the something that I can do??
[newb-alert]