[phillpower2]

You are welcome Chris 

 

Before purchasing anything can you try installing the updates here, here and here as both drives are detected by the BIOS it is possible that there is nothing wrong with the ribbon so we should try whatever else we can first.

 

If you cannot get one local, same ribbon for less than half the price here connects one or two IDE devices to a single MB port.

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Hello Phill,

 

Thanks very much for the driver links. Only one was not up to date, but updating does not seem to have done any good.

 

 

 

If you cannot get one local, same ribbon for less than half the price here connects one or two IDE devices to a single MB port.

 

I already found a cheaper ribbon for less on Amazon, but it told me that I had to order £20 of goods!

 

Should all computer shops sell these? Would PC World (or whatever it is called now) stock them?

 

Please can you tell me exactly what I need to ask for? Is it an 80 wire ribbon I want?

 

Cheers,

 

Chris.

Edited by Channeal, 20 November 2016 - 02:02 PM.

[Channeal]

Hello Phill,

 

Thanks very much for the driver links. Only one was not up to date, but updating does not seem to have done any good.

 

 

 

If you cannot get one local, same ribbon for less than half the price here connects one or two IDE devices to a single MB port.

 

I already found a cheaper ribbon for less on Amazon, but it told me that I had to order £20 of goods!

 

Should all computer shops sell these? Would PC World (or whatever it is called now) stock them?

 

Please can you tell me exactly what I need to ask for? Is it an 80 wire ribbon I want?

 

Cheers,

 

Chris.

Edited by Channeal, 20 November 2016 - 02:02 PM.

[phillpower2]

Hello Chris,

 

Drivers was worth checking if only to make sure you have checked every possibility.

 

Checked PCWorld online and they don`t list them, too dated a technology tbh but a local tech store may have one laying around, you need a minimum 18-inch 80-wire master and slave IDE ribbon.

 

Other sellers on amazon with free shipping can be found here

[Channeal]

Thanks Phill. You're a star!

[phillpower2]

You are welcome Chris 

[Channeal]

Hello Phill,

 

I hope you are well and not working too hard.

 

I got a bit waylaid the past day or so, as I had trouble with iTunes and Windows Media player. iTunes told me to install again because another program had messed with registry entries, but when I reinstalled the same problem still existed. I found a fix for that, but then discovered that Windows Media Player wouldn't open. I had to reregister some registry files to fix it. All seems to be okay now though.

 

I got myself a new IDE ribbon (got it from Amazon in the end, as decided to buy some other stuff I needed), but unfortunately it hasn't made any difference! Will have to have a go at restoring the default settings in the BIOS now.

 

I have been amusing myself by playing around with Linux a bit this week. Am thinking I would like to install it as a dual boot. My C drive capacity is 149.01 GB of which 87.05 GB (58%) is free. Would you advise making a separate partition to put the Linux OS on - and if so, how big should the Windows partition be?

 

Thanks,

Chris

[phillpower2]

Hello Chris,

 

Just doing a bit of tinkering this morning and nothing too stressful 

 

Sorry to hear that the data ribbon did not resolve the issue 

 

Assuming that you wish to dual boot on the Dell, you need to shrink the partition that XP is on and create a separate partition for Linux, you will find all of the info you need here for installing PC Linux, if the problem with the optical drive/s is XP related Linux may get one or both working for you.

[Channeal]

Hello Phill,

Thanks very much for the excellent link regarding Linux. I think will enjoy playing around with that. Don't have a lot of time at the moment though: have to go out and help at a Christmas bazaar in a moment and have a full week ahead.

I tried playing a CD when Linux was running from a thumb drive and it would still only play a CD and not a DVD. I assume that means that the problem is nothing to do with Windows?

Should I still restore the BIOS to factory settings?

I hope you enjoyed your tinkering btw.

Chris.

[phillpower2]

Hello Chris,

 

You are welcome and please do enjoy 

 

Know what you mean about being pushed for time, I`m in the same boat atm 

 

Did you try VLC when running Linux, also worth checking out is KODI which I have used for streaming from a live box, some info here

 

I would leave the BIOS for now and only consider restoring the defaults if all else fails.

 

I hope you enjoyed your tinkering btw. 

 

 

Lost nearly the whole day I was enjoying myself so much 

[Channeal]

Hello Phill,

 

Yes, tried VLC on Linux Mint and got the following message: -

 

Playback failure:

DVDRead could not open the disc "/dev/sr0".

Your input can't be opened:

VLC is unable to open the MRL 'dvd:///dev/sr0'. Check the log for details.

 

I have no idea how to access the log they are talking about. Do you happen to know?

 

Have been playing with Linux since I got home after a very chilly afternoon stuck in the lobby of a church hall collecting admission fees.

 

Just for fun, I tried out one of the latest versions called Zorin. I liked it a lot, but have no idea if this ancient machine would be able to cope with having it loaded as a dual boot option!

 

 

 

Know what you mean about being pushed for time, I`m in the same boat atm 

 

Just you wait 'til you are retired!

 

Cheers,

Chris.

[phillpower2]

Hello Chris,

 

Apologies for the delay, am laid up with a real heavy cold or flu type bug 

 

Not familiar with Mint so cant help I`m afraid, have sent terry1966 a PM to see if he can help. 

[Channeal]

Hello Phill,

Oh poor you. Hope you are taking it easy. There are lots of nasty bugs around at the moment. I haven't caught one so far, but knowing me I will wait until two weeks time when I (very unusually) have a really sociable week coming up!

Thanks very much for sending a PM to Terry. I am happy just playing around with Linux for now though (am a coward and not brave enough to take the plunge and actually install anything, at least not yet! )

I do need to get the CD/DVD player sorted out though. Am thinking maybe I just need to buy a new one.

Really hope you feel much better very soon.

Chris.

[Channeal]

Oh dear! We can't have all you Geeks getting sick!

Hope you too feel better very soon, Freebooter.

[phillpower2]

Thank you both, will hopefully be back up to speed in a couple more days.

[terry1966]

hi channeal, only just read phils pm, been away from my pc for a while.

 

linux is a bit different than windows and usually doesn't include the needed software by default to play dvd's and so you may minimally need to install an extra piece of software called libdvdcss2.

 

can you link to the different versions of linux your using so i can download and test them myself to see if they play dvd's by default or what steps you may need to take to get them to work and play a dvd.

 

as to dualbooting then the only extra resources/strain put on the hardware is the extra bit of storage space taken up on the hard drive by the install itself.

when you boot into windows then all the ram, cpu etc. etc. is used only by the windows os and vice versa the operating systems do not run side by side and cause problems like slowing things down because only one or the other is loaded and uses the pc's hardware.

 

must admit though after a quick skim through the topic it does sound like the dvd drives may be failing though and why you're having problems in windows too, personally the 2 things i have needed to replace most because of failures are hard drives and cd/dvd drives.

 

found this link explaining mints decision to no longer include dvd playback by default and how you go about installing the needed multimedia codecs easily yourself. :- http://www.omgubuntu...ltimedia-codecs

 

 

Installing them via Menu>Sound and Video>Install Multimedia Codecs

 

you will probably need to do this every time you run a live os because usually nothing gets permanently saved when running a live os, but if you actually do decide to install the os and run a dual boot then you will only need to do this the once.

 

Edited by terry1966, 29 November 2016 - 10:31 PM.