[CentOS] New CD-ROM drive causes kernel panic

Tue Dec 27 23:09:20 UTC 2005
Alfred von Campe <alfred at 110.net>

I have a CentOS 4.2 system that had a bad CD-ROM drive.  Every time I  
inserted a CD, the system would hang (no kernel panic, but no  
response to mouse, keyboard, or even the network - all I could do was  
hit the reset button).  Today I replaced the CD-ROM drive with  
another I had lying around.  The new drive is a 24x10x40 CD-RW.  I  
don't know the exact model of the motherboard (I should have looked  
while I had the case open earlier this afternoon), but I know it's an  
Intel desktop motherboard that's at least 5 years old with a 1.7 GHz  
Pentium 4.  Anyway, to make a long story short, now the system won't  
even boot!  Here are the last few lines on the screen:

   Starting udev:                                          [ OK ]
   Initializing hardware...  storage network audio done    [ OK ]
   Kernel panic - not syncing: drivers/ide/pci/piix.c:394: spin_lock 
(drivers/ide/ide.c:c037bb68) already locked by drivers/ide/ide-iops.c/ 
1234

Any ideas how I can work around this?  I've booted from the CentOS  
4.2 CD #1 into rescue mode, but I don't know what I should look for  
next.  Other than removing the CD-ROM drive, what can I do to fix  
this problem?

Thanks in advance for any help,
Alfred