DVD drive won't read the Slackware installation disk
 

Hello

I am currently trying to install Slackware 13.37 on me olde computer. I am sure I've burned the DVD correctly since it boots up the installer on my laptop. The md5 is correct too. However on the old PC, the system just says: 'Searching for boot record from CDROM: Not found' and boots into windows. Then i thought it is the drive. But when i restarted the computer with an UBUNTU disk inside it booted as expected from the dvd and not into windows. Can anyone point me in direction to how solve this problem?

Janek566

Just to rule out the obvious, are you sure it's a DVD drive and not just a CD-rom drive?

Also, some older BIOS versions I believe have a problem with either syslinux or isolinux images (I forget which). So next, I would see if there's a BIOS update.

What make/model of machine/motherboard are you using?

Possible issues:

1. The drive can only do CDs, not DVDs. Is your Ubuntu really on a DVD? It can fit on a CD, so I wonder if that's the media you have it on.

2. The drive doesn't handle recordables very well and this one was bad enough.

3. The drive requires a special driver and if present shows up with a strange device name. On the Ubuntu LiveCD, try this the command "cat /proc/partitions" to see if the CDROM drive has a strange name.

4. Some older BIOSes only know how to boot optical media using floppy emulation mode.

Can the older machine boot from USB as a possible alternate?

OK so i'm sure that this is the DVD drive. As well as slackware, the ubuntu is on the DVD+R disk. I am using an old KT4V motherboard. The DVD drive is a LG DRD-8160B. I can soon send the BIOS name + version info. Maybe i can flash the new BIOS onto the motherboard. Thanks for the replies keep 'em coming! Thanks!

Janek566

EDIT: OK so i have an AMIBIOS by the american megatrends and i think it is the version 3.31a

Full text: 'AMIBIOS NEW SETUP UTILITY - VERSION 3.31a'

Thanks for any help!

Janek566

can someone please help me with this? If no one knows then can anyone point me to another stable and lightweight linux distro like this one? Thanks

Janek566

Did you search online for a BIOS update for your board?

Other distros that can be installed lightweight are Debian (either download the netinstall CD and just grab what you want from the web - example here, or download the XFCE/LXDE disc).

There's also Slax, Puppy, SliTaz, tinycore, vectorlinux, etc. You can search through distrowatch for lightweight distros.

Most of what you'll want are lightweight applications and desktop environments. So avoid Gnome or KDE. Avoid LibreOffice and openoffice except for when you really need them (use abiword and gnumeric). Try chrome/chromium for web browsing and claws for email.

I must've got something wrong or the m-board is VERY outdated since i can only find updates for version 1.* and nothing else. By the way is it possible for the BIOS to only support MS OS?

Thank you for the suggestion i will probably try debian with lxde if nothing helps,

Janek566

OK i think i found a problem. Yesterday the ubuntu booted fine but today the drive gave out loud noises then i heard the disk being scratched and then i've seen something like: 'Cannot read sector 1000'. So i'm guessing it's a new drive then - i'll come back and tell how it all went with the new drive - by the way: can the drive be a DVD-ROM drive? Thanks,

Janek566

I assume you can still find plain old DVD-ROM drives, but most drives you'll find on the shelf will be DVD-RW drives. And if it's a really old box, make sure to find one with an IDE interface. I think most newer drives are SATA.

This seems more like a case where someone needs some hands-on with the hardware to figure this out. I'm curious if this machine could have worked on Slackware when it first came out. Long ago, kernels were small enough to fit in a floppy, and the original El Torito booting from CD just emulated a floppy at the BIOS level (which is where you still are since it switches over to booting Windows when it can see a boot record from the CDROM).

I wonder if this machine can boot from USB.

which distro can i use as a tester? Knoppix?
Thanks

Janek566

You can try using PLoP to boot from USB.

Hell yes!

I'll write back to you guys as soon as i'll get my drive (Should be tomorrow or day after). Thanks

Janek566

EDIT: just got my dvd drive and ... IT WORKS. Now i'm in the middle of partitioning and formatting my hard drive. Wish me luck!

Janek566

// I just move the EDIT2 to a new post so that i can get your attention LOL:

EDIT2: Slackware installed just fine (there was error installing lilo though) then after a reboot i got a message: 'Error loading operating system'. Someone suggested to me to put the installation disk back in and input these parameters for the kernel:

has any of you ever heard of that problem before? The second time i will install slackware, should i manually install lilo? I have an AMD processor - is that a problem too? (AMD Athlon XP - old like hell). I hope you can help me I'm so close!

Thanks
Janek566

What filesystem did you choose for your /boot partition? I haven't used lilo in a number of years and I'm not sure it can boot from an xfs partition (which is what I'm assuming you're using by the parameters your buddy suggested). Typically I make a separate /boot partition formatted to ext2 or ext3 because I know most any linux bootloader will work with those.