So I'm kinda excited to install slack here, but i didnt take my floppy when i built my new machine and I have no cds to burn and im too lazy to go buy some.
Can anyone give me any ideas?
Can I loadlin from xp or.. dunno.. rescue command prompt? and somehow start installation?
Also, I have rh9 on cd, can I boot it and somehow start slack's installation from it?

edit: so i've been reading some topics, and none did actually end up with a user successfully installing linux with no bootable removable media on 2k/xp
I'm trying to find some prog to make a bootable dos partition on my hd so i can boot it and use that install.zip to start installing from dos like it's said here http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...n&pagenumber=2

Hi, I had an old notebook with no floppy or cdrom, but with a network card and windows installed, something like this may be what you are looking for...
The redhat 9 disk has a dir called "dosutils/autoboot" which has a boot kernel and initrd image, make a directory on your windows partition and copy these files as well as loadlin.exe to that partition.
Open a DOS prompt and use the command: loadlin.exe vmlinuz initrd=initrd.img
This will start up the redhat boot floppy image which will allow you to do a network (NFS or FTP) install (so no cd's to burn!) try this with your slack iso's, I know slack has the same utils on one of their disks. This at least will allow you to get your machine partitioned and set up...
Cheers

If he' s running XP then there's no DOS prompt.
You need a floppy at least for the first boot, in this case. XP will let you create a bootable DOS disk that would let you boot install.zip which you had unzipped to a FAT partition which you can also create under XP.
But you still need to boot linux from a cold start. If you were running win95/98 you could do it from the DOS prompt.

But can't I somehow install dos in another partition from inside win xp so i can boot it and use install.zip?

edit: floppy is really not an option
If i can make a bootable multi-session cd then i can certainly boot some cd dos version
And network install is a no go too, there are no other computers here to host the install for me

I think you are coming up against a chicken and egg situation You probably can make a dos partition on your drive and then make it bootable with the sys c: command and then add it to a boot option in the win 2k boot.ini file, but I would really hate to do this without the ability to use a boot floppy if I screwed up...
Options now are:
a/ Make a fresh partition on the xp disk, copy isos to xp partition (as long as not ntfs), boot with redhat, use isos on disk to install on empty partition then move stuff around...
b/ have you an old disk lying around you can fit into your machine, partition into 2, put the linux isos on one and make the other bootable, then install from the isos on the other partition (redhat lets you do this...) Then use to shift to other drive.
c/ buy a friend a beer and burn those disks at their place! (my strongly suggested approach
Cheers

thanx hahaha
I ended up lending a friends only cd-r and burning install disk one to try and install from hard disk, but it doesn't quite work :\
it only identifies the A packages
i thought it could be a bad iso problem (i don't generally check files for integrity :P) but it installed right from the burned cd from that same iso :\
just didnt get to install gnome and kde
my second iso tho looked quite weird after i extracted the files
like all the filenames were in dos 8.3 format, is that right? o_O

Take your cds, take your harddrive, find a friend, and make the installation on his computer