HP Pavilion zt3010 CDRW/DVD ROM Problem

[diersing]

I have an HP Pavilion zt3010us, its been a decent machine and I've really enjoyed exploring on it. I purchased it as an XP Home Edition and have been jumping between XP and SuSE 9.1 Professional on it since its purchase (usually dual boot but sometimes not - for reasons I can't explain I enjoy re-installing).

I recently wiped the SuSE install in favor of Fedora Core 3 and have had some minor issues with the install - namely I've struggled getting the wireless network card to see my WEP network. As I'm prone to, I tried reinstalling the OS but now the CDRW/DVD will recognise the bootable media (XP or FC3) but not run the installer/initial setup of any bootable OS media I have. I've redownloaded, re-burnt DVDs and CDs and have even used MS stamped media but nothing.

This system doesn't appear to be PXE enabled and lacks an internal or external floppy drive so I appear to be stuck using the ROM that now doesn't work. I recall a couple years back a Linux distro (Mandrake I think it was) altering the BIOS or firmware on certain CD ROMS rendering them with limited functionalty somehow. Does anyone know of FC3 doing this? And if so, if there is a solution to the problem?

The drive is a Sony DVD+RW DW-P50A.

Naturally I don't mean to blame Fedora, the machine is not new and the hardware could be to blame for all this but I'm hoping not and with a configuration change I get back to enjoying it.

Thanks for your time and attention,
Diersing

[bytesniper]

your dual booting this system with xp? does this drive work ok when your booted into xp? you said you reburned the fedora iso's... did you do it with the same drive your now trying to boot from, or do you have a nother computer there?

if so then i would test the drive in whatever OS you can boot into on that laptop and test the drives reading/writing when its already booted. if it can do it there then nothings wrong with the drive.. but not sure what would cause that if not hardware failure.

let me know

[diersing]

The system had been dual boot but its currently just a Fedora Core box.

When I burn the ISO's I do them from my iMac or my dedicated XP box. I've not had any problems with the source media but the one I installed with had a scratch and rather then risk it I burnt another copy from the same dedicated XP box I used before.

When the system boots the ROM still works, but doesn't seem as snappy as before - i.e. it takes a while to dispaly folder contents.

When I boot, for example on an XP disc, I get the 'press any key to boot from CD' but when I try that the screen goes black and the disc stops spinning a few seconds later. I let it run overnight and nothing changes (I thought it might be spinning slow and taking a long time to pre-load/copy the installation files).

Thank you,
Diersing

[diersing]

OK, it wasn't the CD rom. I borrowed a USB CD rom and tried and resinstalling with the same 'hung' installation black screen. Watching closely reveiled it was very near the time in the process files being being copied. I Boot-n-Nuked the hard drive and was able to reinstall with any OS I want.