h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I'm trying to install linux from windows XP without a floppy drive or dc rom.

I've got DSL, Puppy, SUSE and Mandrake ISOs on the hard drive (I havent decided which to try yet) and ready to go.

The obvious way to do it was free dos, but as far as I know, you can only make free dos bootable on a fat32 and windows throws a wobbler whenever I try to make a fat32 partition on its ntfs formatted disks.

The alternative, apparently, is to use wingrub - which I cant do.

Can anybody either tell me how to make grub work under XP or to make a fat32 partition without windows sulking, or even a completely different way to install without a floppy or CD?

Its a long shot, but would using dosbox work (I really dont care if I destroy windows in the process)?.

I was going to suggest Zipslack however that has a Fat32 requirement as well.

The easy way to make another partition without windows sulking is to get hold of a copy of partition magic. This is how I dealt with adjusting installed windows when I first played with linux.

So if you can get hold of Partition magic, you install it, ensure you have plenty of free space on the hard drive that you don't need. Then resize the partition. Then you can use the free space to create a new one in any format partiton magic provides. if linux wants another no format no worries you can format just htat partion afterwards with fdisk, just don't touch the windows one or your files will be gone if you use fdisk. While creating space for the linux partion make sure you create a swappartition as well.

I can't give you any specific advice with regard to the Distros you mention, I did try mandrake once but not for long however as it didn't recognise my Network card.

Personally I use slackware www.slackware.com. Dispite what may be said its not hard at all, you just have to be willing to read the instructions and perhaps look around the odd forum.


I won't be able to help with installing without cdrom or floppy at all as the methods I have seen for installing from image on the drive, then require a floppy or cd with instructions on it to tell it to start reading the image file.


Any other questiosn just ask and ill do my best .

any particular reason for no floppy or cd rom at all? Actully on saying no cdrom or floppy, chances are there is a method using a USB stick to start the image install ...

If you just want to play with Linux, why not download a USB-stick image? You expand it onto a USB thumbdrive (or MP3 player) and set your BIOS to boot from USB. In an ideal world you never need to touch your HDD.

I'll try partition magic, thanks.

I've no floppy or CD because I'm using a laptop. It did have a CD, but it blew a couple of days ago


The USB stick is a good idea too - except I dont have a thumbdrive.

Tesco were selling a 256MB USB2.0 MP3 player for £9.99; significantly cheaper than a 256MB thumb drive, but with all the same functionality.

I just checked - sadly, the sale is over; they're £19.99 now. Still pretty good value, though.

http://www.tesco.com/electrical/product.aspx?R=8306724

Unfortunately, the nearest Tescos is 1254 miles away as the crow flies (according to indo.com).

I live in Bulgaria now, getting hardware here isnt easy

Chances are you could buy it from the website...

Afraid not, they only deliver uk.

I did work out a way to do it though.

If anyone else has the same problems, here's what you do.

1. Find an old MS Dos 6.22 in some archives you completely forgot about.

2. Create a new partition and make it bootable.

3. Discover the old version of DOS is corrupt and wont boot...and you now have a completely unbootable machine.

4. Sulk and swear frequently.

5. Wait until sunday evening when your other halfs boss has gone home.

6. Borrow the keys to the office from the missus.

7. Visit said office and use her bosses USB cd drive and boot from there.

Very nice.