[NTLUG:Discuss] CentOS 5.1 weirdness, recommendations

[Leroy Tennison]

I have found more strange problems since installing this about 10 days 
ago than I've encountered in my previous Linux experience.

Kbounce won't play any sound except "round (or game) over".  Other 
things play sort of fine: two of the six Kbounce audio files won't play 
in KDE but they do play when using 'cp {sound file} > /dev/audio'. 
Haven't found any other purely audio problems.

The CD and DVD drives seem to have trouble reading media.  They speed up 
and slow down a time or two before successfully reading it.  Music is 
especially problematic.  KSCD will be playing a CD and "auto pause" 
itself but not at a consistent point.  Rhythmbox does better but even it 
has temporarily paused and then resumed once while the CD seemed to be 
having trouble.  The DVD I used for installation sometimes won't mount, 
sometimes mounts but only the table of contents is readable (get file 
listings but can't copy them) and is fine other times.

None of this is a problem on CentOS 4.6 (I installed to a new HD and 
kept the previous installation, reconnected it after the problems and no 
issues).

Things I've tried to no avail:

Both xen and non-xen kernels, I'm on the latest versions
Changing jumper settings from Master/Slave to Cable Select (can't boot)
Using only one removable media drive (tried both CD and DVD)
Using a different IDE controller (Promise) for the removable drives
Turning off IDE Bus Master Support (BIOS recommendation for non-Windows)

At this point I'm looking for any suggestions including a different 
distro.  Help!