Strange Optical drive problem

[squareyes]

Nigel Henry wrote:
> On Thursday 06 November 2008 07:54, squareyes wrote:
>   
>> Nigel Henry wrote:
>>     
> Hi Winton.
>
> Oh dear. Oh dear oh dear. I've been reading through posts on the Lenovo forum 
> for the 3000 this afternoon, and there are a bunch of folks unhappy with the 
> optical drives that come on the 3000. Matsushita is one make that stands out
>   
> From other hits I got on Google, including one of yours from earlier in the 
> year, I saw the following stuff, and did you try appending the kernel line in 
> Grub with, combined_mode=libata ?
>
> Anyway. One guy said the only distros he installed, where the optical drive 
> worked, were Slackware, and Foresight. Then he said that the solution he 
> found was to use LiLo as the bootloader instead of Grub, and that was with 
> Mandriva 2008.1 Free.
>
> It's not the first time that I've seen using LiLo instead of Grub, has 
> resolved some problems that Grub seems unable to deal with.
>
> Someone else had problems with the drive after installing iTunes. But that was 
> something that seemed to be specific to Windows Vista, and there was a fix 
> given.
>
> And yet another suggestion was to append the kernel line in Grub, with:
> all-generic-ide
> That may well be worth a try. When you get the grub menu, press E, then down 
> arrow to kernel, and press E again. If the "quiet splash" is at the end of 
> the kernel line, use backspace to remove it, and add the "all-generic-ide" 
> bit (without the quotes), to the end of the kernel line after leaving one 
> space. Then press Enter, followed by pressing the B key.
>
> Removing the "quiet splash" bit will enable you to see a bunch of text when 
> you boot, which is pretty much as you see in dmesg, but sometimes there is 
> stuff which isn't saved in dmesg. It does scroll past pretty fast.
>
> The guy above who suggested LiLo as a fix, said that before he installed 
> Fedora 9 (his first install of Linux on the machine, and dual booting with 
> XP), the dvd rom drive was working ok with XP. It was only after installing 
> Fedora 9, that the drive no longer worked, either with XP, or Fedora 9.
>
> Did the dvdrom drive work for you, when you only had XP on the machine?
>
> I can't make the trip to Oz, but it sounds nice. Barbie on the beach on 
> Christmas day sounds quite surreal from where I'm living in Northern France.
>
> I'll try to find out how to install LiLo instead of Grub. Synaptic shows LiLo 
> as available to install on my Kubuntu GG install, but having never replaced a 
> bootloader with a different one, I don't want to mess up anything with any of 
> my currently installed distros. I have a bunch of freespace on another 
> harddrive, and am 93% done on downloading the iso for Intrepid Ibex (on 
> dialup). I don't remember there being an option to use LiLo on my GG, and HH 
> installs, but we'll see. If not I'll install Grub as bootloader for Intrepid 
> 8.10, then play around with replacing Grub with LiLo, which should be 
> interesting to say the least.
>
> All the best mate.
>
> Nigel.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>   

Hi Nigel,
thanks, drive didn't work win XP, have already tried those above, no 
success, so have just had a chat
with LENOVO tech support(3rd time), without any joy. Seems according to 
them a software problem and needs Vista for the drivers,
needs the image the machine had on it at point of sale. Sounds a bit 
like anyone with this machine is being almost forced to use Vista(Drive 
doesn't even work with Win XP ), I thought that was illegal. Sounds a 
bit like a consumer affairs problem.
They(Lenovo) don't have any drivers that will correct the problem even 
with XP, so I guess it's a case of "buyer beware" won't get another 
Lenovo, unless it is proven to work with software I wish to install,
be it Win XP or Linux. Seems that it's a pretty basic expectation that 
CD drives just work these days.

I will email Lenovo parent company letting them know about the situation 
and their potential loss of business, though I doubt they will care very 
much.

Guess I will persevere with the external combo drive I have been using, 
just that my bag is starting to get a bit heavy  :-)  I help some older 
people with no internet connection set up Ubuntu and install with my 
connection. It must sound strange to you that Christmas temperatures 
here are in the high 30's
usually. It's hard to imagine a cold one, we never get snow and ice here 
at any time of year.

Many thanks for your help, much appreciated.
Take Care.
Winton