Help! Ubuntu ate my cdrom drive

[alitalf]

At least, I think it was the dual boot linux install that caused the problem. The drive is no longer visible under Windows, and it did work just before I installed Ubuntu.

Because I had to replace the hard disc in my laptop, and reinstall everything, I reserved 20G for another OS, and installed Ubuntu in it.

Yesterday, when I wanted to write a CD of slides I had scanned for use at Oxonmoot, I discovered that the cd drive was not listed in Windows file mangler, nor inthe device manager. I have run out of bright ideas about how to fix it, except reinstall windoze and don't dual boot. That would be another 2 days wasted, AND I'd lose linux on this machine. I had been hoping (gradually) to migrate away from Windows, at least partly.

What I have found out/tried so far:

• The CDROM works fine under Linux, and wrote the needed disc OK
• The CDROM is listed as the second boot device, after a USB floppy drive I haven't got, but if I leave a bootable CD in it, grub loads linux unless I take other action. I am not sure if it is even possible to boot to a CD. I need to test that, but I doubt it.
• Searching for problems with Win XP losing ythe cd drive, I found mentiion of a registry key under current control set, with an upper filter value. I removed it as instructions suggested, and now Windows lists the linux partitions as unformatted drives, but still does not see the cdrom drive.
• I first tried restoring windows to an earlier configuration with the system restor functin. The earliest one available, when the cdrom was definitely working, did not restore the functionality.
• I also tried fitting a cdrom drive that works in another computer, but that made no difference. Hardware failure is pretty much ruled out.

Can anyone figure out what I can do to make it work again?

Comments

[crazyscot.livejournal.com]

I agree that you've pretty much ruled out hardware (including cable) failure. Windows seems to be the issue. I've never heard of it losing drives like this, though... Does the cdrom appear in the Device Manager? Does anything happen if you tell it to search for new hardware? If you have the spare IDE channel, you could also try putting two cdrom drives in and see what happens.

[alitalf.livejournal.com]

foradan helped me via IM, and I just managed to make it reboot and see the drive. The problem is that grub does something ill-conditioned if there are both sata and pata drives in the same machine, and the part of solution I have so far was to run the windoze recovery console from the installation disc that came with the machine, and recreate the mbr.

So good so far. Now I am trying to decide whether I should do lots of clever things to run grub from the linux partition, and then edit boot.ini (I think) to give me the option to run grub, or whether to scrap dual boot, and use linux from a usb disc or even usb memory when I want to run it.

Any advice?

EDIT: For now I am going to try to boot to the existing partition using grub installed on a usb memory.

[crazyscot.livejournal.com]

boot.ini is a pretty safe route, I was doing that with NT 4.0 in 1998ish. (These days with grub installed to the Linux partition; in those days it was the same but with the infinitely less-friendly LILO.) The only stickyish bit is figuring out the right syntax to teach it about the Linux partition.

[(Anonymous)]

I tried the usb drive with grub approach, and it failed. It looks as if the drives rename themselves partway through the boot process, hd1 becomes sdb or some such, then the boot process fails and grub reverts to a minimal shell called ash. It might be possible to type the necessary commands to make it boot from ash, but if so it would take about 15 minutes to boot to linux every time. Life is too short!

Will you be passing here any time soon in your peregrinations? If so I would welcome some assistance.

Else, any wise words on what to do with boot.ini?

[alitalf.livejournal.com]

It were me. It logged me out while I was bending the elbow at Northfarthing Innmoot.

[crazyscot.livejournal.com]

Grub has its own idea of drive and partition naming (hd0, hd1 etc) that doesn't correspond to the usual Linux way.

ash isn't part of grub; for it to have come up you've managed to boot something. Quite often the Ubuntu installer doesn't seem to do the 100% right thing with setting up the list of device driver modules to autoload - especially on dual boot setups - and needs a little tweaking.

I'm currently planning to spend the day of Sunday 14th at Bletchley Park, with C; I could probably stop off at yours afterwards if the timing suits (early evening at a rough guess) ?

[alitalf.livejournal.com]

Yes please! Would you both like to come to dinner (but it won't be too elaborate)?

[crazyscot.livejournal.com]

Have conferred with C, but alas she has to be back home sharpish that day so has to decline.

Bletchley closes at 5, so I'd reckon on being to yours for 5:30ish. If that still suits, non-elaborate is absolutely fine, though you need to know I can't eat fish or seafood, and prefer to avoid dishes which are heavy on mushrooms.

[(Anonymous)]

You could stick the slides onto the hard drive you bought for me, and I could make the CD tommorrow?

[muuranker.livejournal.com]

That was me!