How can i Install Linux without a cdrom and no floppy
 

Hey i bought a Dell Latitude Cp. I bought a 40Gb IDE HDD and a 64Mb ram for it for all under a tenner.For some reason when i turn it on it says there is no hard drive. I have formated it to FAT32 and still nothing. But thats not the point. I need to install a small linux on it like DSL or basic linux or even redhat. I have no floppy or cd rom drives. I have one usb and thats it. It has Phoenix ROM BIOS PLUS version 1,10 A02 and MagicGraph 128XD 48K SVGA BIOS. Please help me failing is not an opition please tell me how to install :).

Can you boot from USB?
Please provide more info?

Set the partition you made 'active' or label it 'boot' with fdisk or cfdisk.

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On the other questions: what input devices -do- you have? will it do a network-boot? a usb-stick or usb harddrive to boot from? you must have some device to get it to boot from.

maybe it's possible to partition the harddisk, make it bootable and have it in someway boot-ready before you connect it into the pc.

My laptop is pretty baisc. I really only want it as a we book.Iv made a DSL live usb i plug it in and cant figure out how to boot it. the boot sequence is diskette first but i can change it to hard disk only. I have no option to boot from a usb or live cd :(. will i make a video of it ?

OK, you can't boot from cd or usb and no floppy either?
What system is on it now?
How did you format it FAT32 if it can't boot anything?

IT currntly has a brand spanking new 40Gb IDE hard drive. I formatted it with swiss knife to backup my ps3 , then i reformmated it for the laptop. I activated a partition. I have no floppy disk drives or cd rom drives. I have a single usb port which i dont think i can boot form. It doesnt seem to beable to find my HDD.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XRInKzWJg thats what happens. Need any specific pictures ?

OK what is "I formatted it with swiss knife to backup my ps3 , then i reformmated it for the laptop. I activated a partition."
How did you do that?
Removed laptop hd and put it in another pc to format it?

Ye i have an external IDE cabby i formatted it with.

It doesn't look good, I've never seen a 40GB FAT32 formatted HD, why FAT32?
Senior members here can help with the HD problem(laptop recognizing it) as that's not my forte...
However; if you can get it to recognize the hd then maybe were in business.
Anybody can help?

Well my PC recognizes it alright. I came as a NTFS hdd , but i tohught due to my laptop is an older machine i better format it to an old standered.

Format it to ext3 please.

If I understand correctly, your machine wont recognise it. How do you mean, the BIOS wont recognise it? A live environment wont recognise it?

As for the second option, you seem to be having trouble booting from USB. Perhaps your BIOS doesn't support this. You could, of course, try updating this.

Ok i think i probably should try and update them , but how ?

Well its a bit of a catch 22 at this stage, you can't get the USB stick to boot without the BIOS update, but you can't get the BIOS update without the USB stick booting.

But to go back to my original question, how do you know the machine wont recognise the HDD? Is it in the BIOS it isn't being picked up? I'm still shakey on that bit.

OK well i put my HDD in the caddy and iv screwed it in yet it still doesn't find it.