Now that I know it is more than likely a hardware problem with my cdrom (being picky about what cds it will read), what would brands work best with Mandrake in your opinions? I appologize to everyone who has tried to help me with the cdrom problem for being so confusing about it. Sorry Thanks everyone for your help. I really appreciate it.

Their are very few that don't work in Linux. This link will let you know which ones don't work
http://www.fokus.gmd.de/research/cc/.../cdrecord.html

Basically just get a good brand.

This is actually a really good subject for me.

I just recently bought a refurbished DVD/CD-RW from LG. Unfortunatly there is something wrong with its burning capabilities. When I took it into the shop, I didn't have any of my sample music CDs (which sounded like static Sh*t) so he burned a CD with nero and it seemed to work fine.

Anyways, I'm going to attempt to burn the Mandrake isos (I've had them on my computer since before I got the new burner). But first, I'll have to get some new blank CDs, I guess I'll just pick whatever ones up that seem to be decent quality. All the other CDs I've used have been poor quality (i.e. several years old and possibly scratched/damaged before burning).

Well, I'm hoping my linux problems are not due to a faulty CD burner but rather the CDs themselves.

I use an Asus CDRW and a Mitsubishi diamond data DVD rom and both work flawlessly under mandrake

I use a Creative CDRW and all's fine. If you want DVD, the Nec ND 2510 is quite cheap, works great, and is silent. the ND 2500 is single-layer, but costs even less.

Yves.

My liteon works fine with mdk10... The previous sony was not great.

I have Pioneer DVD and LG burner 48/24/48 (I don't remember their exact type) and I don't have any problems with them in Mdk 9.2 and 10.0

Thanks guys. I'm going to be buying the cdrw drive from newegg but I've run into another bit of confuzzy-ion. The cdrw I want (It's a sony) says in the specs it has hardware support for win 95,98,nt,2000,me and xp . Pretty much all of the cdrws say that listed on there. Does this matter much? I figure they mean if something goes wrong they can help you with windows only right? I want to buy the Lite-On cdrws but I heard either LG or Lite-on cdrw drives are the ones that fry themselves under Mandrake. (Bit confused about em. I don't know if Lite-On is made by LG or vice-verse because NewEgg lists them separately as a Lite-On cdrw and an LG Lite-On cdrw).

I think the problem with the drives is fixed in the latest versions of linux anyway... I think that was LG? I have a liteon with MDK 10 anyway and it's fine.

It said it was for windows OS's, but works fine in linux Yep, it's a support issue and the software they supply tends to be for windows only... In linux you have K3B et al...