I downloaded the ISOs and was about to burn them, but since Ive partitioned with Partition Magic 8, it doesnt work.

What happened was I didnt know it was going to use the D: drive for the Linux partition, which already exists as my DVD/CD-ROM drive. When PM was installed it converted D: to E: and Emy cd-rw drive) to F:

NEITHER works despite it searching the computer for references to D/E and replacing with E/F. I cant even access a disc in it in "My Computer", it just says "device is not ready". I looked in Device Manager in Control Panel and checked if the CD-ROM settings were OK, and they are perfect.

Why doesnt the drives work? I cant access either disc drive and this is serious.

bump

I wont get much answers here I think. Whats the biggest PC forum on the net? Searched google found nothing.

You'll get an answer from a Mod if you keep bumping it up so soon.


Did you try putting in a blank cdrom and see if the cd writer program detects it?
If you made a partition for linux with partition magic, that wasn't needed as every linux I heard of comes with it's own partitioning tools.

I already tried putting in a blank CDROM thats what didnt work.

Are you saying you are using Win* app to burn iso's to CD and having trouble with the app or OS not recognizing the burner?

No, I did the partitions like I said, it did what I said, and now I cant access discs at all. Im not talking about the burner. When I go into Windows Explorer or My Computer, it says the drive is not ready, all the time when I try to access a disc inside.

Try Letter Assigner. I had to use it to force Win98 to leave a space for my D: while it was still switching between FAT32 and ext3 filesystems years ago. Windows' lettered drives is a pain in the ass, especially the renaming of things like cd drives and drives/partitions housing the swap file...

ok so in Windows you can't access the drives ~
1) Check the data cable is right way around & jumpers are kushti
2) Check Device Manager applet ensure the drivers have not been changed
3) Check the Disk Managment applet, that the drives are recognised properly