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The date of this post is: Thursday, July 12, 2007. My pal wants his laptop back soon.

On Monday July 9, 2007 I did a clean install on my friend's Toshiba Satellite 1905-s304 laptop.

I used a Feisty Fawn version 7.04 cd from Canonical, not downloaded from the 'net. It was mailed to me and has a nice Ubuntu cover

I had previously used this cd to install my desktop computer. Mostly everything worked from the start. I'm posting this message you are reading to LinuxQuestions from it, now.

My pal's computer has (or will have) wireless networking via a Linksys WUSB11v4 adapter. I have installed that adapter onto my desktop to learn how to install it on his Satellite 1905-s304.

In coming to understand how to install the ndiswrapper packages I was told I needed to put the Canonical cd in the drive of the laptop and add the cd. I have the correct commands for all that stuff.

When I put the cd in the drive, I received no icon on the desktop. When I put the cd in the drive and cold booted, I received no icon. The laptop's BIOS is set to boot from the cd first, then the harddisk. The optical drive has gone South!

When I clicked: Places/Computer/CD-RW/DVD-ROM and clicked on the icon this message returned:

Unable to mount media
There is probably no media in the drive.
(the Canonical cd IS in the drive)

Right clicking on the icon and looking it over I see that
under Permission the owner is:

unknown

Under Drive

Toshiba
DVD-ROM SD-R2102
Connection SCSI
Media CD-RW/DVD-ROM Drive

I don't understand why a drive that installed Feisty has "disappeared" in only 3 days.

This is the drive used to install Feisty over a broken XP, three days ago.

No modifications have been made to ANYTHING before last night. The optical drive has not been used, no files had been touched. NOTHING!

After googleing a variety of keywords, I have learned very little.

Some suggest modifying FSTAB by commenting out the /dev/scd0 [which is the cdrom entry]

Others suggest changing /dev/scd0 to /hda or /hdb, etc.

Other suggest the kernel is the problem, but I can't confirm that.

Still others suggested installing Gutsy. I downloaded the .iso, burnt a cd and put it in the laptop's drive. Re-booted. The drive clicks and clicks and never does anything else.

Now the Toshiba 1905-s304 has no optical drive that can be used.

What can be done? I have the Gutsy cd. I have the Canonical Feisty cd. But if the optical drive can't be mounted, it can't be used. Can I make a floppy on my desktop that will force the laptop to remove Feisty? Then I could try the Gutsy .iso. Suggestions?

Please save me from some major embarrassment by helping me fix this and not having to tell a "friend" that I've ruined his $2000 laptop.

Without trying to wade thru all the details you have provided, I will tell you that using the optical drive to install Linux is not going to physically damage the drive or its control interface. If the machine will not boot from a know good bootable CD, then you have an issue that is not related to installing Linux.

Before doing anything else, find a bootable CD known to work in other machines--eg a Windows install disk or a "live CD" Linux distro, or something like the Ultimate boot CD or the GParted CD. See if you can boot from any disk known to be good.

Gutsy is not stable yet, it might not work at all. And even if it does, you'll need to make sure the downloaded image is not corrupt (calculate checksums against the given sums) and that you burn it correctly (not as a regular data cd, but as image; on Windows I recommend imgburn). If you installed Feisty from the disc, the drive is obviously working. Linux can't damage (especially if you don't alter anything!) optical drives during the night if the machine is off, so there's another reason if the drive is faulty.

You can comment-out the line you talked about from /etc/fstab. It's effectively the same as removing it (commented lines are not read), but if you later want it back it's more easily done. Commenting out means (in this case) that you write a # in front of the line, as the first letter on the line. Lines starting with # are comments in that file, if I remember correctly. Or you can just delete the line (or cut it and paste to a text file if you want to spare it for later use). You can't change it for hda or hdb because those mean primary and secondary IDE harddrives; cdrom devices are usually hdc (primary) and [i]hdd[/] (secondary) respectively, files under /dev, but you can use those only if the device files exist (check if there's /dev/hdc). /dev/scd0 might be used to access the drive in a different way than if you used /dev/hdc, but you can always try.

I would download and burn (again with calculating checksums, making sure the image is not corrupt and burning with imgburn on Windows) a live-CD Linux, Knoppix for example (it's good for testing purposes), test it with another pc to see that it boots ok, and then try to boot the laptop with it. That shows pretty well if the optical drive works or not. Note that even $2000 laptops can have optical drives that break up (even "just like that").

I'm downloading Knoppix Live-CD via bittorent and in a few hours, I'll get back to everyone. Thanks.

One thing that could have happened is the laser head is dirty, some dust on it.

Another very slight possibility is the whole head unit could have come off its track. When opened, where is the head unit, near the spindle or the outer edge. Try giving it a wee nudge to put it back. Note this could also totally ruin the unit as well.

I have a copy of Knoppix Live-CD. It won't "load" live, either. But more to the point, I see that the floppy "can't be mounted" either.

Using Hitachi's Disk Fitness Utility floppy, I see the floppy mounts and runs software. I wish I had a drive fitness test for this combo cd/dvd about now.

When I had my motorcycle repair shop---)(%*(*& years ago---we had a saying for difficult situations: "get a bigger hammer".

A "wee nudge" sounds much more sophisticated......

I once had a laptop which would occassionally refuse to start up. Cycling the power always cured it--until the day that it didn't. Listening carefully, I could hear no hard drive spinning. Power down, pick up laptop, and give it a healthy smack (that's roughly 100 wee nudges). It then started up perfectly.
The next day our IT people installed a new drive....

The experienced geek will always know when to use the smack, the hammer, or the wee nudge.

I would check the computer's BIOS CMOS settings. See if the optical drive is detected by the motherboard and if it is in the boot sequence. This is the most basic test to see if the devices in a computer are working.

This line in your original post looks suspicious. I absolutely don't understand what it means. Is it possible that the "commands for all that stuff" affected the optical drive? When you say "add the cd" do you mean add the cd to the list of software repositories?

The BIOS has all the drives: harddisk, floppy atapi, and network as possible "boot" devices. It has no options but that, to select which device to boot from first, second, third and fourth.

Commands for all that stuff involve only installing, setting up, and operating ndiswrapper. Nope, not suspicious.

In your original post you said this:
Are you now saying that there is no option to boot from CD?

just try reinstalling ubuntu, that is what I did when my hard drive went south to, unless your cd-drive is broken, it should at least boot from the cd.

Reinstalling is why I'm posting in the first place. The CD is inaccessable whether it's the first boot device or not.

This guy is having the exact same problem with different equipement:

http://help.lockergnome.com/linux/in...ict423119.html

No, the BIOS is fully functional. I can select which device to boot from and in which order.

Sorry to hear about this hardware problem, situations like this are why I hesitate to work on friends computers, you end up inheriting any random problems that would have happened anyway.

But regardless, it sounds like the CDrom is completely dead, or not completely connected. I would turn the computer off and look under it to see if there is a way to pop the CD drive out. Laptops are usually very modular, so there should be a lever or switch to release the drive. Put the drive back in and make sure it seems to snap in correctly. Cross your fingers and power it back on...I have an old laptop CDrom that just will not work unless it is completely even, so also try making sure it is on an even surface. If it no longer shows up in the BIOS then there isnt much you can do

ATAPI is CD-ROM.