Bought this laptop at a flea market for $100. It's an IBM T23 2647GGU. Now the fun part. No restore disc, no floppy drive, and the previous owner didn't wipe the machine clean. It's set-up to dual boot Windows 2000 and Red Hat 8. The Win2k wants to login to a network or the computer and the guest account is disabled. I've never used Linux, so excuse me if my terminology is wrong. Red Hat loads into some pretty log-in screen. Cant get around it. When it's loading I get the option for "interactive start-up" If I say no to everything it freaks out and goes to a screen that looks like DOS but it's not a command prompt it just says=

Red Hat Linux release 8.0 (Psyche)
Kernal 2.4.18-14 on an i686

localhost login:

I want to format it and reload WinXP and Red Hat 9 in dual boot fashion, but I need to login to one of these OS's and look around to see what software is on here. It won't boot off of CD's no matter how much I play with the BIOS. I think there might be some software keeping me from changing it, but I want to look and find out. Any thoughts?

If you have someone with partition magic 8 or better, that should be able to erase the partition. Fdisk, or at least the older ones I have, see the partition but will not let you change/delete it. A good partition tool should be able to overcome that.
If you have a Linux CD, boot from it and after it writes the partition table and formats, it will give you a error message that you need a root partition. Cut the system off or reset. It will be just like you set the partitions. I have done this several times with my Mandrake 9.1 CD #1. It has a really good partition program.

Hope this helps.

Won't boot off of cd's. OEM OS disc's, Linux and Windows alike, just won't boot off of them.

Did you change your BIOS setting from hard drive to CD?

If you don't see the option try banging on the "del" key then if that don't work the "F1" then "F8" key. Usually one of those will get you into BIOS so you can change it. It's there, just got to find it.

Hope this helps

Yes, it is there. However changing it does not make it boot off the CD. It ask's if I want to boot off of the CD, then when I say yes, it goes straight to the OS boot list. I've tried booting off of Window's OEM CD's some Linux boot CD's ( Suse, Manderake, Red Hat 7.1) and am getting Nothing. I've been working on this for a few days.

I have this on one of my old systems. On the screen right after the memory count and such, look right at the bottom. See if it says "press any key to boot from CD". You can just keep hitting the space bar while it boots and see if that helps. It may go so fast you don't see the question.

Running out of ideas here.

You might want to start linux in single usermode.
When you see the multiboot screen, look for the key combination to switch to text mode. (with lilo it's ctrl-x)
next type linux 1
this will start linux in single user mode, and you should be logged on automatically as root. Once your on the shell, you can change the password of the root user.
Then reboot, and login as root. At least you have a linux environment then, where you might be able to fix some problems.

None seen, just the Win2000 Advandced start-up options. Is there any way to back out of the log in screen I described above and go to a command line or something? What do you do if you accidently attempt to log in and you change your mind. Something like typing exit or cancel? Neither of these two worked, but maybe theres something I'm just not trying?.

Sorry, was thinkin you used a linux multibooter. cant help you with the windows thing.

If I ever get this laptop working (http://www.linuxquestions.org/quest...&threadid=89965 ) I was hoping to make it a DVD and MP3 box for my car, while keeping the laptops built in wireless networking. Maybe I should stick with Windows. I have Red Hat 9 lying around but I don't think I can do what I need to do with it. Any thoughts?

I don't know the specs of this laptop, but I assume it has a floppy drive, and is capable of booting from it? Get a boot disk from www.bootdisk.com

They have bootable disks for both Windows and Linux. From there, you should be able to take whatever steps necessary to open/remove one of the OS's and let you start clean.

However, I would desperately try to find out why you can't boot from CD. Without that, it will be difficult (to say the least) to find Windows XP or Linux to install with floppies. Some will allow you to start the install process with floppies, and then have the CD take over, but those are becoming less common.

Linux is very much capable of doing what you want. With the right distribution (Mandrake or Red Hat probably), you could have it working in almost no time at all.

if im not wrong, the pretty "log-in screen" is the grub loader?
and u get the option for interactive startup after you select linux from there.

dont say no - just let it load everything. anyway, since you get to the
"
Red Hat Linux release 8.0 (Psyche)
Kernal 2.4.18-14 on an i686

localhost login:"

part, you need a user account to get workin. it didn't freak out, it just loaded a few modules and some other reqd stuff.

you wouldnt have the root passwd for this, would you?

Why did you create a separate thread to point to your existing one? This is like double posting and is against the rules. I would suggest to anyone to follow his link to his existing thread if you have any suggestions, etc. This thread has been reported to the moderator of Newbie to have either merged or closed. Regards.

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...threadid=89965

Well, I don't think it's the same topic. I believe he is simply asking if his plans for the future are within the capabilities of Linux. Whereas the other post is asking for help getting the laptop working.

Just my two cents.