I have a Toshiba M200 with a blank hard drive. This laptop does not include a cd drive, will not boot from USB, and has resisted all attempts to install Linux. I have attempted to use the SD card to install linux, but it will only boot from an SD card with a specific floppy image with a specific name. I then tried to set up a pxe boot server on another box I had laying around, but That was a disaster. I have little hard core networking experience, and was not up to the task. Is there a way to set up an install image on the hard drive? I have removed it from the laptop, and can plug it in via a usb adaptor to either my linux box, or my win 7 laptop. I have tried google, but the only result I found involved installing from a booted computer. In Essence, I want to create a bootable partition on the HD, plop the HD back into the Toshiba, fire it up, and run the netinstall and install Debian that way.

The linux kernel comes with most of the driver modules you'll require to get a system server up.

Except maybe, video. so choose a medium resolution VESA (to be safe).

one other problem I see, is

grub and the MBR, may be written taking into account that the

other HDD is there and this will mess up the hdd locations recorded during setup!

Personally, if you can, replace the hd in an other laptop, install the linux system

And put the hd back and boot.

now if working you can resolve the video res issues.

I hope this helps

Cheers Glenn

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Thanks! My earlier research had advised against setting up linux on one computer and moving the HD to different hardware, so I had not even tried that. I got it to boot Sunday night. It won't boot all the way to Gnome, but I have a command prompt if I select recovery mode, and that is progress! Thanks!

Yeah, I think they remember M$win setups with chipset drivers ,etc., still I'd try it in safe mode. lol.

I thought "setting up linux on one computer and moving the HD to different hardware" was the best thing for computing since hot (potatoe) chips.