I have an old HP Omnibook 900 on which I want to install Linux, since having windows on it is no use to me.

However, the BIOS was protected by someone else, and I cannot change the boot sequence. The current booting order settings are :-

1. Floppy
2. HDD

As you can see, I cannot boot from CD. Also note that I cannot use CD and Floppy simeltaneously.

Hence, I am looking for a guide to booting to the hard disk (DOS or Windows), and then proceeding to install Linux from the CD using some kind of CD drivers. I have also heard that several linux distros have bootable installtion floppies, which i think i can copy to my HDD, and then use to boot fro CD.

Once again, please remember that I CANNOT use CD and Floppy simeltaneously.

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Abhinav

May be missunderstanding, but if someone's got to the BIOS before you, you might be able to return it to its defaults by removing the battery for 24 hours. Better still - to avoid using force - simply put a piece of paper under the metal thing: breaking the circuit.

Hope helps.

You can create boot images on floppy which will transfer the boot to the CD drive for you. I think there is a small boot loader called SBL (or something) which will do this - comes with the ubuntu install CD.

There are plenty of tutorials around about installing via a floppy.

There is always installing mu linux - comes on floppy.

You are probably best to try cracking the bios password or resetting it to defaults as suggested.

I tried the BIOS thing. The laptop usees a special ROM that cannot be cracked without replacing the chip itslef, which is not possible.

Isn't there some software that can be installed to the MBR(prefarably from windows) that can allow me to boot from CD ?

Or is there some way i can configure the windows boot loader to boot from the CD drive ?

I found this article interesting, but can i take it further ?

http://hacks.oreilly.com/pub/h/2337

Try loadlin to boot from dos on your HD and then use the CD to install linux

Sorry for causing all the trouble guys. Turns out, there was a feature i my computer that allowed me to change the boot sequence without going into the BIOS.

Anyway, thanks for the help, I learned a lot today.

To boot from the CD drive you are going to have to set the BIOS to boot from it. Otherwise you can boot from diskette http://wiki.linuxquestions.org/wiki/Boot_floppy
That's how you install from CD with a machine that has no CD boot option. You can't boot partially into windows and then boot into a CD.
http://rute.2038bug.com/index.html.gz
http://rute.2038bug.com/node21.html....00000000000000
http://rute.2038bug.com/node34.html....00000000000000

EDIT: oops, walked away for a while before posting.

You cannot store a changes bios password to a ROM chip. That's what ROM means. The BIOS password is normally stored to nvram aong with the rest fo the cmos settings. Perhaps this uses a seperate battery?

There are normally ways around this - usually involving opening the case. Removing the nvram battery will reset the bios to it's factory defaults. Some bioses have backdoor passwords.
... erk! That's not a feature: that's a bug! Part of the whole reason for password-protecting your bios is so folk cannot change the boot order (and thus use a live CD distro for cracking...)