inability to use cd rom or dvd burner

[kato40]

With regards to said conundrum , would changing the Hard drive to a new one ,enable me to access the BIOS to use the DVD burner or CD? or would I need to replace the Motherboard ,instead of the Hard Drive.
Thanking you,
kato40

[Old-Polack]

With regards to said conundrum , would changing the Hard drive to a new one ,enable me to access the BIOS to use the DVD burner or CD? or would I need to replace the Motherboard ,instead of the Hard Drive.
Thanking you,
kato40

Having no idea what your actual problem is, we'd have no idea what a proper solution would be. Accessing the BIOS has nothing to do with what hard drive is or is not connected. How about describing the actual problem in detail? Do a step by step run down of events that you experience in order to determine the scope of the problem.

[jimwilk]

I am totally confused over the question.

Jim

[T6]

you mixed a lot of things

first things first

are you using ide or sata devices? please be very specific, including how you connected ide cable and how you have the jumper settings on the ide cable if you have it

what kernel do you have in pclinux?  open konsole and write uname -r and paste the results

[kato40]

the console shows 2.6.33.5 pclos1.bfs
Firstly I have not touched or altered the CD or DVD jumper cables or settings.
I am trying to change the boot sequence to be able to use a "live " CD or DVD for
any other "Distros ".When I access the BIOS setup and alter the sequence to say,make CD rom the first boot, and hit F10 to exit and save ;it does not happen.Hope this helps.
Thats why I wondered if a new Hard drive might remedy the problem.
Thanking you,
kato40

[luikki]

is  your cd/dvd listed on the general tab of your bios?
does your mobo have a boot choice? (you can see an indication at the bottom of the screen, next to the option hit del or f2)?
different mobos have different ways to select the boot device. on some, you have to us f keys (f5,f6) to move the device you want to use to the first place...

[Bald Brick]

kato40,

So you can't boot from your optical drive(s). Can you access them when running PCLinuxOS?

[T6]

you have the oldest kernel available

please update it as soon as possible

about drive boot order, the os has no relation with this

just bios and jumpers/cables

please give more info about the drives, if old or new, cd rom, cd-rw or dvd rw

as specific as possible

[kato40]

I have done the followig ,and these are the results:
Primary IDE master [WDC-WD800BB-00JHCO]
PRI IDE slave not detected
SEC> IDE Master not detected
SEC. IDE slave not detected
SATA 1 not detected
SATA2 not detected
Both CD and DVD drives do not allow any thing to be accessed.,music or videos,etc.
How can I update the Kernel?
The CD drive is a samsung,The DVD  drive is a burner,generic ? Samsung RW 52-24-52 DVD =multirecorder
Hope this helps
p.s. I was given this tower as is, with MS Win XP, which I deleted and installed a distro;when it played up I installed PCLinuxOS,
kato40

[kato40]

According to Synaptic ,I have kernel 4.2-4 pclinuxos 2011
kato40

[djohnston]

I have done the followig ,and these are the results:
Primary IDE master [WDC-WD800BB-00JHCO]
PRI IDE slave not detected
SEC> IDE Master not detected
SEC. IDE slave not detected
SATA 1 not detected
SATA2 not detected
Both CD and DVD drives do not allow any thing to be accessed.,music or videos,etc.
How can I update the Kernel?
The CD drive is a samsung,The DVD  drive is a burner,generic ? Samsung RW 52-24-52 DVD =multirecorder
Hope this helps
p.s. I was given this tower as is, with MS Win XP, which I deleted and installed a distro;when it played up I installed PCLinuxOS,
kato40

I'm guessing that's what you are seeing in your BIOS settings. The BIOS settings directly control the hardware and have nothing to do with the operating system.

According to what you listed, only the Western Digital hard drive has a working connection to the computer's motherboard. You say you have a CD and DVD drive. You can leave the power plugs in while testing if you wish. Disconnect the PATA (wide ribbon cable) or SATA (narrow cable) from both CD and DVD drives, then try each optical drive one at a time. Until you get the computer's BIOS to recognize those optical drives, you will get nowhere with trying to boot from a CD or DVD.

[djohnston]

According to Synaptic ,I have kernel 4.2-4 pclinuxos 2011

There's no such animal. It has to be a 2.6.something. Open a terminal and enter uname -r, then post the kernel version reported.

[CaptainSarcastic]

Are the optical drives getting power?  (Do they light up?  Does the tray open and close if you hit the button?)

Are they PATA drives or SATA drives?

Assuming they are PATA, you are most likely seeing one of the following:

1.  Bad IDE cable

2.  Jumpers on the drives set wrong for where they are on the cable.  If a drive is jumpered to be Master but is connected to the Slave connector on the IDE connector it can cause it not to be recognized, for instance.  Jumper one optical drive to be Master and attach it to the Master connector on the IDE cable and see if it is recognized.

3.  The drives are jumpered as Master and Slave but you have a motherboard which wants them to be jumpered as Cable Select, or they are set to Cable Select and it wants them set to Master and Slave.

[T6]

+1 to all said

to update kernel, please open synaptic and press reload button, apply all updates and restart if required, then load synaptic again and press the search button, write kernel

from the long list of results, search for kernel 2.6.38.8pclos3

there should be bfs, bfs pae, a64 options

depending on the amount of ram you should choose between bfs or bfs pae, if you have 4 gbs, the bfs pae, if less than that, bfs

select it, install it and restart system, the boot menu should list it now as a new option, select it and be patient the first time it boots, it can take up to 5 minutes, maybe more while it adds driver modules existing on your system

if the kernel works as expected, yu can edit the boot menu to make it default, this can be done in pclinux control center/boot

about the drives, i think the drives are dying or at least one is dying, seeing the hard disk is ide, i am sure both drives are 5 years old

turn off the machine, open it, try to disconnect one of the drives, from the ide cable and from the psu and then turn on the machine on again to see what bios reports

are you dualbooting with xp? does xp see the drives?

[kato40]

Hi Folks:
Here are the latest  test results. I managed to download the latest kernel;I had no trouble
,but when I tried to shut down ,it would not switch off. This Tower has only PClinux OS, LXDE.
installed.
I am tempted to replace the Hard drive and the DVD burner otherwise I might have to see about a newer
PC.

Thanks, any suggestions ?
kato40