You've probably been asked this many times, but the search keeps freezing


I have a laptop with an ancient BIOS which doesn't boot from the CD drive. Which file on the CD do I need to copy to a floppy to boot Mandrake?

If the Laptop you are refering to is the laptop mentioned in your sig..

Then I would reccomend that you try Damn Small Linux or something really lightweight instead of something as "big" as a recent version of Mandrake.

On Install CD one you should be able to find a folder named Boot

Within this folder you should see several readme files. Read them because they will tell you how to make a boot floppy. (Or at least they should.)

If they are not there or if they are not helpful then locate the file boot.img.

If you are lucky there will be a program called Rawrite in the Boot folder which will help you create the boot floppy using the Boot.img file.

Depending on the distro you may need additional floppy disks to kick start the hard drive install.

There are some distros you can install via the network but that could take long time depending on the speed of your internet connection.

Good Luck,

Thorn

Thanks, it crashes when I use the graphical install and stops doing anything when using the text install... I'll try an older Linux