PCLOS Fails to boot when DVD-Drive module removed

[thealmightyos]

Hi all

You might remember a few days back I was attempting to find an OS for an old Dell Inspiron 4000. After some helpful advice I managed to install PCLinuxOS LXDE Mini on the "Craptop".

Now I have come into a little annoying problem. This laptop has two "bays" in the front that can accept different types of modules from battery packs to HDD's or the default CD or DVD tray.

When I have the DVD module loaded into one of the bays PCLOS boots up no problem. But if I put an extra battery pack in that bay instead PCLOS will get to the splash screen and no progress takes place for nearly 5 whole minutes then the laptop shuts off.

Not quite sure what to make of it to be honest and asking if anyone has an idea of what is going on?

Will be around for a while, setting up my CIFS mounts in FSTAB

[horusfalcon]

Hmm... did you shut down and remove the batteries before you removed your optical drive?  (The 4000 is not rated for hot-swap.)

The service manual for the Inspiron 4000 is available here

I hope this will help a bit.  You may find that, if you shut down to do the swap, things might go better?

Good Hunting,
D

[Just17]

What happens if you only remove the CD/DVD drive tray without replacing it with anything and then boot up?

[thealmightyos]

same thing. if I leave the bank open it wont boot

And I am removing it while shut down before boot to answer that question

Sorry about the long delay. I had a PSU blowout in my gaming rig and I have been working to assess the damage.

[horusfalcon]

What is your boot order looking like in Setup?  Is the laptop set up to boot first from the CD/DVD drive?  If so, and the drive is absent, it would fail to seek and that might be what's hanging things up.

Just a thought before bedtime (midnight shift this week)...

Later On,
D

[horusfalcon]

I see this hasn't moved in a while.  Is there still an issue here, or have you found a solution?  Jot back, if you will, and, if there's still an issue, let's see if we can sort it out.

Later On,
D

[thealmightyos]

yeah, that laptop is not used very much anymore. But it still bugs me how it would not boot

The boot order automatically changed when the drive was removed. understand that pclinuxos started to boot (not talking about grub) and would stall without the cd module. maybe during boot pclinuxos was looking for that cd-rom drive. or not. don't know enough about it.

I thank everyone for their thoughts on this, but I think it is time to put an end to this. CraptopMKI has been retired. I get it out every once in a while to test low memory/cpu programs but that's about it. Now I use another (dubbed CraptopMKII) running PCLOS Enlightenment. I guess we could just label this as an unsolved curiosity