Okay.
I'm now getting fabulously clean boots after having done the pen-drive trick with the SimplyMEPIS iso that I've got.
The next issue is: my BIOS is WAY out of date, and since I want to be doing stuff with Kismet with my wifi-card working in RFMON (hardware-details
here), I need to flash and upgrade the BIOS. I also need to do this so I can complete backing up my system before I do a partition and install because my DVD-drive has largely forgotten how to read and write.
I got over one hurdle I'd been having, but the issue now when I try to execute from Windows is the blocky commandline-text GUI tells me "Cannot flash if memory managers (e.g. EMM386) present." Booting into Linux also does me no good because MEPIS will not run the .exe, or the .bat (which, just calls the exe with a few different args) and does not know how to interpret the WPH-file which is the actual meat and bones of the new information that needs to be loaded. I remember reading somewhere along the way that a WPH can be run if I do some hex-editing but I don't think this simplyMEPIS distro has the right tool pre-installed.
I'm not sure whether the same 'memory management'-problem would be caused by a live USB-boot of Linux or not.
Do I need to download a distro that has DOSBox preinstalled in the live version, or is there something to doing the hex editing?
Because of the way XP is configured, there's no way to get to the command prompt before the shell is loaded -- startup-scripts are only enabled post-logon, and XP no longer supports an old ME-option called RunServicesOnce, which apparently can run stuff before logon.
Short of installing Windows 98 to get a non-memory managed cpl, what are my options?
Will a live version of SimplyMepis interfere with the BIOS-flash, or would it be managing different memory than the complaint is about? If Linux can do the flash for me then do I need a new distro-iso so I can run the exe, or can I install programs directly to the flash somehow and have them show up "pre-installed" on live boot? Or is there a surefire way to edit the WPH so the BIOS can get updated without having to wait for that?
Please help.
Thanks.