Hi,

I dual boot with Mint 10 and Mepis 8.5. Lately, I've often found that when I boot up the computer, and get the screen which gives me a choice between the two distros, I can't go any further. Things are frozen. If I use the reset button to start again, that same screen works and I can choose as I should be able to.

Yesterday I found that neither of the live distro cd's would boot and using the reset button made no difference. So, on booting up, I looked at the bios. The delete key showed me that the first boot option was properly set to cd-rom but F12 key showed me that the first boot was set to the HDD.

I thought I'd found the problem. But when I selected the cd-rom as the first boot option it made no difference. Nothing would boot from the dvd drive. I checked the F12 boot sequence in the bios again and found that it was still configured to boot from the HDD. In other words, my attempt to change the boot up from the HDD to the cd-rom hadn't registered.

Could someone tell me what to do now, please? I could re-install one of the distros if necessary.

My hardware: Gigabyte GA-M57sli mobo; athlon 3800 processor; corsair ddr2 xms memory; Nvidia Gforcegt graphics; W.D. 400gb Sata HDD.

I've a growing suspicion that all this is a hardware problem. I've prowled about in the BIOS and can't find a mention of my DVD drive anywhere. The CMOS utility, in the BIOS, only lists my HDD and the floppy. No mention of a CD-ROM at all.

I've made sure that the connectors within the computer case are well and truly socketed home. Would an electrical failure in the DVD drive itself remove its listing in the BIOS? And is there a software method of testing whether or not the DVD drive is working?

Update the bios, I recently had problem with dvd recognition on hp pavilion a1720n.
Updated bios dvd was recognized.

Thanks for your suggestion, EDDY1. I've been to the Gigabyte website and, unfortunately, they recommend that I do not try to update the bios on my particular motherboard.

I'm now convinced that the problem is with my dvd drive and am going to order a new on this evening. I'll let you know how I get on in due course.