Live and Alternate CDs will not boot

[cantab]

I want to do a clean install of Intrepid, to clear out all the mess that my system has.

However, I'm stopped at the first hurdle. The CD's won't boot. I get the screen to choose the options, but on the desktop CD, the run live, install, and check cd options all fail, usually just hanging but occasionally giving i/o error message. Memory test and boot from hard drive work.

I've done

md5sum /dev/cdrom1

in my current install and got the right value, so the discs seem to be burnt fine.

My setup has a PATA hard drive on the primary ide controller, a phillips dvd writer on the secondary ide controller, and a scsi drive. The scsi drive is the one I want to install the OS on.

I could try a different optical drive if anyone thinks that will make any difference (I have an old cdrom drive somewhere)

Hardy has no problems whatsoever. But I don't want to install Hardy and then upgrade, I want a clean system.

[dibl]

Re: Live and Alternate CDs will not boot

Yeah, I think it's some combination of your optical drive and the CDs. If you can try the CDs on another computer, that might reveal something, and if you can try your other optical drive on your computer, maybe that will work. You also might want to clean the lens, if you can, in your optical drive.

These Linux Live CDs use an extreme compression technology to pack the maximum number of packages onto the CD, and they can be "touchy", especially in marginal optical drives.

[cantab]

Re: Live and Alternate CDs will not boot

How does one clean the lens? On a laptop it's easy - it's there to see! But on a normal drive?

[dibl]

Re: Live and Alternate CDs will not boot

How does one clean the lens?

I've never cleaned mine either, but it seemed such a virtuous suggestion!

OK, here's what Mr. Google suggests:

http://www.smartcomputing.com/editor...rticleID=31106

http://muzso.hu/2008/08/17/how-to-cl...ros-superdrive

Holy cow! After reading that second one, I'm sorry I said anything!

[cantab]

Re: Live and Alternate CDs will not boot

The disc worked fine on my laptop (despite it having a particularly flaky drive). I put in the second drive in my desktop (the one I'm trying to install on) - I'd had trouble earlier but that turned out to be PEBCAK. And it's worked in that second drive (using Smart Boot Manager to boot from it). It's still no good in the dvd drive though.

So problem solved (well, modulo the actual install going to plan)...but it does seem strange for the drive that burnt a disc to be the one that CAN'T read it!