No bootable devices? install off harddrive? help!

Forum: HD Install
Topic: No bootable devices? install off harddrive? help!
started by: violetdream

Posted by violetdream on April 15 2006,18:35

Hi everyone,
I am a total Linux newbie...recently my subnotebook died and I'm going to buy a cheap one like a libretto or something on ebay. I want it to run quickly so I thought that Linux was the best choice. Problem is, the subnotebook I'm looking at has no bootable devices, just the hard drive. I'm really new to everything so I don't know where to start. I do have the capability to take the hard drive out and attach it via usb to my main windows computer. I'm not really sure what to do from there, however. I've installed windows off of the hard drive on my old computer several times but have no idea how to do it in this case. Is there a guide for newbies that could help me with this?

Posted by doobit on April 15 2006,20:21

Does the sub notebook have usb and usb boot capability in the BIOS?

Posted by violetdream on April 15 2006,20:29

It has USB, but I'm not sure if it can boot off of USB devices...I don't think so.

Posted by humpty on April 15 2006,20:38

You could try a "Frugal Type HD Install" as outlined in the Getting Started Page that Dillo pops out after booting off the CD ROM. The
problem being is that your Installing desktop PC (to your usb hdd)
will not be the PC that will boot the ("now not a usb hdd") on your
libretto. I'm not sure if it will auto-detect this without making changes. (better wait for more posts)

On the other hand, I guess if you have cross installed windows before, that it must be win9x (since 2k upwards does not like new hardware). If this is your speciality, then I suggest you install win9x on your libretto, together with a copy of loadlin.exe and all the files off the DSL cdrom. Boot into command-line only mode and use loadlin to load DSL. If you can get this far, post back here or search the forum for more details about loadlin. From thereon it's up to you wether to stick to this setup or use it to do a proper frugal install.