Not necessarily so. The fix may be to change a BIOS setting. So we know it worked with Ubuntu and W7. What we don't know is how those 2 OS's used the drive, drivers etc. Could be different drivers, or parameters passed to the drivers, etc.

Do you have the program lshw installed? If not, its on Slackbuilds. Could you install it? Once installed, you need to start the program as root. With it you can display detailed information on the drive. You can run it as a non root user, but it may not show the DVD info. On my system, I have to allow root access to the gui with the command 'xhost +local:' in a user knosole, then 'su -' to root, then 'lshw -X' starts the gui version of lshw.

The gui has a few columns, you need to double click from left to right starting on System then MotherBoard etc. You will get to a coulmn with lots of entries. IDE interface should be listed. Click it to see the DVD-ram entry. The right side will show a lot of info on the device.

Could you post the make - model of the drive. I cut and pasted mine for reference. I had my install Slack DVD in the drive. You can see if came ready. Right now I'm in KDE, although I run XFCE most of the time. I don't think KDE has much to do with the problem. I suspect it would fail on any desktop.

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This is what I get:

I noticed that my CD drive and the linux hard drive (sdb5, SATA disk) share the same IDE interface even though they go separate in the motherboard. This may account for the fact that when CD hangs sdb5 becomes unstable or read-only, doesn't it?

Maybe a clean re-install swapping hard disks and so moving sdb drive to sda will do the trick.

If two devices are on the same IDE interface, one needs to be the master, the second the slave. This is usually set with jumpers on each drive. New drives are shipped as master, so if the second HD was added, without the jumpers being set, this may well be the problem.

Usually if you have a CD or DVD with a HD, the HD is set to master, and the CD or DVD is set as slave. A few manufactures used a third jumper called drive select. It requires special cables, and avoids the need to adjust the jumpers.

If you look at each drive, the jumpers may be marked. It some times takes the eyes of an eagle to see the markings. Manufacturers usually document this so you can also look on their web sites for help. You will need the model numbers for each drive.

If this is the case, ( the jumpers are both master ) then change one, power back up, and give it a try. I don't think this requires a re-install.

In the mean time, I do a little googling and see if I can find anything relating to the particular DVD drive you have.

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I did a search on your LG drive, and found the manual. The master/slave cable select jumpers are on the back, to the left of the IDE cable. I took a screen shot of the manual, see the attached file.

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Good news.. the problem is SOLVED!!

The LG drive was set as slave but then I noticed the secondary hard drive wasn't connected to the SATA-2 slot but to a SATA_E1. I don't know what SATA_E1 is for but I moved it to the SATA-2 slot and now my CD/DVD seems to work fine.

Thank you so much, you've been really helpful :-)

You are most welcome. Persistence pays off.