[ltp] Warning -- Windows can hose your machine!

[Tom Grydeland]

No kidding.

I've had absolutely no trouble with either the IR, the serial port or 
the built-in modem since my last flurry of messages to the list.


Lately, the DVD-player has started to act up, though.  It has been 
behaving slightly odd over maybe the last half year or so -- chugging 
away when trying to read CD-ROMs and placing a ton of error messages in 
the syslog:

kernel: hdc: packet command error: status=0x51 { DriveReady SeekComplete Error } 
kernel: hdc: packet command error: error=0x50 
kernel: ATAPI device hdc: 
kernel:   Error: Illegal request -- (Sense key=0x05) 
kernel:   Invalid field in command packet -- (asc=0x24, ascq=0x00) 
kernel:   The failed "Start/Stop Unit" packet command was:
kernel:   "1b 00 00 00 03 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 " 
kernel: cdrom: open failed. 
kernel: hdc: cdrom_decode_status: status=0x51 { DriveReady SeekComplete Error } 
kernel: hdc: cdrom_decode_status: error=0x30 
kernel: hdc: cdrom_decode_status: status=0x51 { DriveReady SeekComplete Error } 
kernel: hdc: cdrom_decode_status: error=0x30 
kernel: hdc: cdrom_decode_status: status=0x51 { DriveReady SeekComplete Error } 
kernel: hdc: cdrom_decode_status: error=0x30 
kernel: hdc: cdrom_decode_status: status=0x51 { DriveReady SeekComplete Error } 
kernel: hdc: cdrom_decode_status: error=0x30 
kernel: hdc: ATAPI reset complete 
kernel: hdc: irq timeout: status=0xd0 { Busy } 
kernel: hdc: ATAPI reset complete 
kernel: end_request: I/O error, dev 16:00 (hdc),

kernel: hdc: irq timeout: status=0xd0 { Busy } 
kernel: hdc: ATAPI reset complete 
kernel: hdc: irq timeout: status=0xd0 { Busy } 
kernel: hdc: ATAPI reset complete 
kernel: end_request: I/O error, dev 16:00 (hdc), sector 1320820 
kernel: hdc: irq timeout: status=0xd0 { Busy } 
kernel: hdc: ATAPI reset complete 
kernel: hdc: irq timeout: status=0xd0 { Busy } 
kernel: hdc: ATAPI reset complete 
kernel: end_request: I/O error, dev 16:00 (hdc), sector 1320816 
kernel: hdc: cdrom_decode_status: status=0x51 { DriveReady SeekComplete Error } 
kernel: hdc: cdrom_decode_status: error=0x30 

I could go on for megabytes...

So far, that's only happened for data CDs, but today it also happened for
an audio CD, so for the first time it occured to me that there might be
something wrong with the drive itself.

So, in my naïve trust in the value of tech support, I decided to call 
IBM tech support.  Here is a summary of what happened:

1) Unless proven otherwise, this was a software problem.
2) Only Win98 is supported on my machine 

so, to try to satisfy mr. tech support person, I tried booting my 
wintendo partition -- and much to my surprise it booted just fine.  
(surprise, since the last few times I let that bootblock virus out, it 
was in vmware, and I didn't expect it to still recognise a true machine 
when it saw one).

In windows, I opened a data CD, selected a bunch of files with the
intention of feeding them to some data-eating program to demonstrate to
mr. tech support that the problem was with the drive, not Linux.

    The machine promptly crashed.

I had to bring out the ol' paperclip to get the attention of the machine.

While rebooting, I stopped by the BIOS hardware tests and ran the test for
the DVD drive.  It reported OK, but as far as I could tell from the sounds
it made, it didn't actually try to *read* anything from a CD during the
test.

Next time around, I booted into "safe" mode in windows.  Mr. tech support
told me to remove the drivers for the CD-ROM and DVD-ROM using the device
manager, so I did, and rebooted again.

    When I now booted into windows, the screen was black.
    The backlight was on, but every pixel was black.

Ctrl-alt-del rebooted the machine, and I could bring it back into "safe"
mode.  Here, I tried removing "unknown display" screen drivers (installed
by vmware, perhaps), thinking that they might have something to do with
the problem.

At this point, tech support expressed his regret that my screen was now
unusable, insisted that dual boot was not supported, and the only way they
could help me was by having me restore the machine to factory default
condition and run a "PC doctor" on it, so he offered to send me a
"recovery" CD (what a misnomer -- "disaster CD" would be more
appropriate), gave me a contact number and we parted.

I then booted back into linux, indending to get back to getting some work
done.  I use runlevel 3, so I logged in on one of the consoles, and
brought up X.

    Imagine my surprise when the screen was just as black in X as it had
    been in Windows.

Besides being completely blind, I seemed not to be able to talk to the
keyboard either.  Ctrl-alt-backspace failed to kill X, and ctrl-alt-fx
didn't take me out to the consoles.  What a complete bummer.

    "Good morning, Mr. Thinkpad.  I believe you and Mr. Paperclip have met
    already?"

I went back into the BIOS self-test, ran the screen test (twice) which
reported everything OK, and when I booted Linux again, (fsck time) X did
come up as before.  Big sigh of relief here.

However, I am now unable to talk to my IR port again.  The serial port and
the MWave modem still work, but no IR.  I have all my notes from last
time, all the settings appear OK, I enable the port with setpnp, reboot,
verify that it's still enabled and that the settings reported by
'lspnp -v', tpctl and setserial all match, run irattach to the serial
port, but no activity visible to the Palm appears on the port.  irdadump
also fails to notice anything happening.

This is so depressing.  I finally had IR working.  When I was trying last
time, I was working blind, not really knowing what things were supposed to
look like or how to make sure they got that way.  I believe I know what
the settings are supposed to be and how to set and test them now, and to
me, everything looks OK, but it still doesn't work.  I've tried disabling,
re-enabling and rebooting I don't know how many times.

And that's the story this time.  I'm hitting myself for even thinking
about keeping that windoze partition.  When the recovery CD arrives, I'll
ship off all my data to somewhere safe, "recover" the TP to call IBM tech
support a final time to see if I can get a replacement DVD drive, and then
I'm reformatting my drive -- I'll keep just enough of a DOS partition to
store a hibernation file.  Consider this 'pad molested for the last time.

Anyway -- I believe a word of warning is appropriate.

    Windows can hose your machine.  Just say NO.

(and if anybody's got any suggestions, I'm keen to hear them.)

Thanks for your attention, and good night.


-- 
//Tom Grydeland <Tom.Grydeland@phys.uit.no>


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