Hi

I have an old dell laptop, and I have tried running some live cds on it (eg. knoppix) and they all have trouble mounting the cd drive properly.
How can I diagnose this problem?
I found one (system rescue cd) which handles the task properly, but how do I analyse it and compare its functioning to the other live cds that don't function?

Note that the BIOS has the cd drive set up properly and that the livd cds do get started so, for a little time at least, the cd drive is seen perfectly. The fault seesm to occur later when the distro tries to mount the cd drive.

How do I find out thatg the correct block device is being used?

Ta

class_struggle; 1 ? how old is old? read something to the affect that old cd disk may be problamatic being read with new drive or v os. or drive is too old & cannot read new cd/dvd media. attempt to read disk /media on other machine. if other machine reads with no problem then media or disks maybe problem. process of elimination only way to go!

Thanks for reply.
It's not old enough to cause those types of problems.
I feel it's incorrect block device assigning, though somebody might have dealt with it already.
I never seem to get answers like that eg. "oh I solved that last week", nevertheless I appreciate your answer.

Any idea on what type of interface? May not be ATAPI.

I have similar problems with liveCDs because I use SCSI devices.