I just switched from Xandros to plain Debian. I was in the process of copying music from data DVDs to my HDD and my DVD burner stopped reading discs. It acts like there isn't one in the drive (the light on the drive even turns off, indicating "no disc"). I tried rebooting to fix it which didn't work, then I shut down and powered up again, that worked for about 10 minutes then the drive started blinking like it was reading the disc and the light went out again. I did not have this problem with Xandros and I really want to stay on plain Debian. My drive is a Benq DW1620 and im using Gnome, if that matters. I'd really appreciate some help on this, I'm a lLinux n00b so I've tried everything I'm capable of to get it to work. Thanks.

I have a very similar problem with a new Sony DVD burner and Ubuntu. I tried installing 5.10 on my computer. CD boots okay and installation starts. But after a certain spot the drive just stops working and I get an error from the installer saying read error.

I know what you are going to say, "Bad CD burn". Thats not it at all. I also tried the CD I got from the Ubuntu people (5.04) and had Ubuntu installed on my computer when I had an older TDK DVD burner. It worked fine then, but since I put in the new DVD drive many of the linux distros (liveCD and installer) won't work. They all recognize the drive correctly but somewhere during the boot or install process it just stops doing anything. The drive is good because it works great on my Windows XP bootup. I had to hook up an older CD drive to do my install. The 5.10 disc worked just fine.
Now that I have Ubuntu 5.10 on my computer, DVD drive still does the same thing. When I put a disc in it, Ubuntu recognizes the disc and brings up the app that is associated with the contents of the disc, but then nothing happens (movie doesn't play, cannot view pictures stored, etc). Then I try to eject the disc and get an error. I have to reboot to get the disc out. The only thing that works ok is audio CDs. I can play them and eject them. All else it Fubar.

I googled this problem many times, trying to rephrase my question in hopes of finding an answer. This thread is the closest I've gotten. Please point me in the right direction.

try to UPGRADE the DVD's firmware at the site (or downgrade).
put the writer in slave mode on the disk' chain.
try to put with a master CD (don't connect it on the same chain of a HDD).
try to put it alone slave.

I have firmware 1.0a for my Sony DRU810A burner (which I recently discovered is a re-labelled BenQ drive). I searched for an hour last night and could not find a firmware update for my drive.

As far as My drive's IDE settings, I have 2 harddrives on IDE 0 and the DVD burner on IDE 1 as Master. I have tried setting it to slave with no change in my problem.

Could it be an incompatability problem between the drive and the IDE driver linux usues? It would have to be something in the Burner that is different. About the only linux LiveCD that works is Mediainlinux 3 beta. I do not know the difference that allows it to work while all others I have tried fail.

Mobo bios is up to date.

if your live cd work fine, try to find in it the driver.
this cd is readable from windows, or you can try explor it when you boot from.
Another idea, generaly, the live cd comes with a procedure to install it on hard disk, try this.

Alas, Mediainlinux 3 beta does not have the hard drive install feature yet so the developers say at their site (otherwise I would have installed it instead of ubuntu because of the new drive).

I am moderate linux user, so I really don't know many of the technical details in drivers or how to isolate problems with drivers.

Thank You for your efforts to help me anyway.

I too have a DW-1620, however I don't have the problems you're having.
Perhaps I might be able to help you.

Can you tell me:
- What is your current firmware revision? Have you updated it?
- What is the output from:
# dvd+rw-mediainfo /dev/dvd
(you need dvd+rw-tools for this)
- Are you running sarge?
- When the drive 'stops working' what is the output from:
# tail -20 /var/log/messages
# lsof /dev/dvd
- What are the contents of /etc/fstab

Unfortunately Linux heated my burner up so bad that one of the chips inside of it exploded. I never had a chance to get the problem fixed, and I'll never buy another Benq again. Thanks for the help, good luck to grizzly69 on his problem.

I find it hard to believe that an exploding chip was either Linux or Benq's fault.

Right, I held a lighter to it until it blew up.... pfffttt.

OK, that's believable