Greetings: I have a couple of older laptops that I am trying to setup with linux.

None will boot from a CD as they do not have them.

I am trying to make the boot floppys on my win2000 desktop and am not having any luck.

I have tryed every procedure I can find.

Most are for a win9x system and do not work under 2000.

I found a book in a store that showed a how-to for win2000, as such things go, they wanted more for the book than I had with me, and when I got back there it was gone.

All I can remember of that how-to is that you clicked START and then RUN and then typed in a command>>>

I am hoping that someone here might have seen this procedure.

The book I was looking in is a fairley new one for RedHat 8.0

I tryed looking around the RedHat site without success!

I even tryed a few Google searchs

HELP please!!!!!!!!!!!1

Are you trying to make boot floppies for linux, or Windows 2000? (i.e. a linux boot disk or a DOS one?)
If it's linux, I suggest http://www.toms.net/rb/ He puts out a really good boot disk, which you *can* create from windows...read the FAQ.
If it's a DOS boot disk you're looking for (which p'bly won't help w/ the whole installing-linux thing, but just for information's sake), just go to my computer, right-click on floppy, click "format" and make sure to check the box that says "include system files" or something like that"

incidentally...are you also trying to install red hat in it's entirety from floppies???

If you need to make a Linux boot floppy using windows, you need to get a little prog called "rawrite.exe". You can find it at the ftp site of most major distros in the dosutils folder.

You should elaborate a bit on exactly what it is you're trying to do...

Greetings: I am trying to make Linux boot floppys.

I have the choice of using a PCMCIA CD drive or a parallell ZIP drive to load linux to the laptops.

Rawrite only works under true DOS and will not work, for me, under win 2000! Any Ideas on getting to true DOS on a win2000 box?

No I'm not looking to install RedHat from floppys! As a matter of fact I would like to install SlackWare on one and Mandrake on an other! Haven't decided for the third?

I did a quick scan of the FAQ on Toms page and don't see win2000 info. I have printed it out and will READ it at work today tho..

ummm...true DOS on a Win2K machine isn't going to happen, unfortunatly...the farthest Win2K goes into DOS is that little command shell, which won't work. As for installing linux, use the CD drive, preferably...getting a parallel ZIP drive to be recognized as boot media may take some doing, although I don't really know. As for making linux boot floppies... Do you have the Mandrake CD, and the CD-ROM drive hooked up? If so, just put the Mandrake CD in (while running windows) and a screen allowing you to do various tasks (inc. making a boot disk) comes up. Click on that. Using that boot disk and the CD, you should be able to do the install
g'luck,
~Laura

P.S. if you make the boot disk that way, Rawwrite (2 W's) is on the Mandrake CD and is used automatically. So that's not really an issue.

Mandrake uses (a version of) RawWriteWin. You can get it at http://uranus.it.swin.edu.au/~jn/linux/rawwrite.htm
That way you don't have to go to true DOS mode.

There are a few versions of rawrite.exe, such as rawritent.exe and rawritewin.exe. One of them is bound to work in a W2K command line session. I would suggest a google search to find the site(s) for these utilities.

With rawwritewin on the site I suggested you don't even have to go to the commandline! It works just like any windows program, also under W2K

Greetings: Rawwritewin is what I had been hoping for!! I have already written 2 boot image disks and hope to try them some time this week!!!!
Thanks much yngwin

Michael

Greetings: The boot floppys from rawwritewin work great!!!!!
Thanks ALL for the help and thoughts in behalf of adventure!!