Puzzling CD-ROM
 

Hi all:
Thanks for reading this post and hope you can help me determine the cause of this behaviour.

##### My Desktop Box:

## Processor: Intel P4 3.20GHz L1: 16K, L2: 1024K
Ram: 2.0 Gb ( 2 x 1024MB DDR2-533)
Video: MSI/ATI PCI-E 128MB
Overclocking: None
MemTest: 2 Months old. OK

## Disks:

/sda: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes
Device Boot Start End Id System
/sda1 * 3 4501 ------------------7NTFS--------Wxp
/sda2 4502 7001-----------------83Linux-------Ubuntu
/sda4 7002 9729 f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/sda5 7002 7101 ----------------82Linux-------Swap
/sda6 * 7102 8484 --------------83Linux-------Debian Etch
/sda7 8485 9729 83 Linux Slack

/sdb: 250.0 GB, 250059350016 bytes
Device Boot Start End Id System
/sdb1 3 21161 7 NTFS--------------------------MyData
/sdb2 * 21162 30401 c W95 FAT32 (LBA)---------Win/Linx

## Media Drive:

/dev/hda' rwrw-- : 'LITE-ON' 'LTR-52327S' CDRW

## lspci

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 915G/P/GV/GL/PL/910GL Express Memory Cont roller Hub (rev 04)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 915G/P/GV/GL/PL/910GL Express PCI Express Root Port (rev 04)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) PCI Ex press Port 1 (rev 03)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB UHCI #1 (rev 03)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB UHCI #2 (rev 03)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB UHCI #3 (rev 03)
00:1d.3 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB UHCI #4 (rev 03)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 03)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 PCI Bridge (rev d3)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FR (ICH6/ICH6R) LPC Interface Brid ge (rev 03)
00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) IDE Controller (rev 03)
00:1f.2 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FW (ICH6/ICH6W) SATA Controller (rev 03)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) SMBus Contr oller (rev 03)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc RV370 5B60 [Radeon X300 (PCIE)]
01:00.1 Display controller: ATI Technologies Inc RV370 [Radeon X300SE]
02:00.0 Multimedia audio controller: Creative Labs SB Audigy LS
03:00.0 Ethernet controller: Marvell Technology Group Ltd. 88E8053 PCI-E Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 15)

##### The Problem:

I recently downloaded and burned an ubuntu 8.04 image on my desktop box. Left the CD on the drive and booted to it. Ran the CD integrity check and it failed. After some strugle with the image, the CD burning process, and the iso md5sum, you can see more about the process on this tread

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...aviour-664158/,

I managed to produce a sound ubuntu install CD on my vista Laptop. Booted the laptop to the CD and since it's integrity check came positive I placed the CD on my Desktop drive and booted to it only to find that the CD integrity check fails ayet gain.

I booted to my Desktop XP install, fired up VMWARE letting it see the CD Drive. The VMWARE booted the ubuntu install CD; I ran the cd integrity check on the vmachine and the check came out positive.

I further underwent the ubuntu instalation process on the vmachine and it finished without a glitch.

Now how can this be?

How can a CD read from an upper layer (a software on the operating system) give a good integrity check and produce a sound ubuntu installation when the same CD read at a lower layer (BIOS) gave a failed integrity check and couldn't install ubuntu's base system?

Thanks

I would have to say its a problem with the integrity check system. Maybe when you boot from the CD its not bringing something up correctly or its using a basic controller driver that's not 100% compatible with your cdrom/motherboard.

Creative Labs sound cards are known to cause some data corruption. Remove it and try it again.

When writing a CD or DVD, select the slowest speed that is possible. Slower the speed will reduce errors in the CD. Lite-on optical drives are not quality. All recordable CD and DVD always will have errors. The integrity check is more of a useless feature.

You are explaining about low-level and high-level hardware. VMware is high-level hardware that is meant to be reliable and stable. Your computer may not be on the same par as VMware reliability and stability.

If you download from BitTorrent, there is no need to do a checksum. I recommend buy a memory tester and check the memory. Sure memtest86 can be used, but may show nothing.

I recommend upgrade the computer with memory that feature ECC. This feature should reduce data corruption. Increasing the voltage could increase stability of the memory.

The problem could be the power supply. Cheap power supplies can not handle high loads. Quality power supplies can handle high loads even in high temperature environments, but are costly. Seasonic 300 watt to 700 watt models are good while Enermax 700 watts to 1000 watts are good.

Some motherboards have faulty BIOS. There are some recent posts that ASUS is not doing a good job of writing a BIOS. Though this not the only brand. Other brands are having the same problems. May have to include noapic and/or noacpi or apci=off to make the installation process smoother.

UPDATE:

I succesfuly downloaded, MD5SUM checked, SHA1SUM checked, burned and installed the lastest CD release of the following distros:

OpenSuse
Fedora
Mepis
Mandriva
PcLinux

I also Left the box overnight doing memtest86+ to find:

passed 10
errors 0

So this leaves me to the conclusion that the ubuntu alternate CD is either doing a bad job configuring my CD ROM or is just not lixbie's desktop friendly.


Thanks all for your support