1. hi, everybody!

2. is it possible to fire up a windows installation from within ubuntu? i am asking this because i can not start the installation with a floppy diskette. the floppy drive is defective. worse, the cd-rom drive can not detect/read the installer.

3. from ubuntu, i can create the necessary fat partitions, detect the cd-rom and copy its content - the windows installer - to the fat partition.

4. what i would like to know is this. with the # 3 above as given, is there a way to fire up the windows installation procedure from ubuntu?

5. many thanks in advance!

Sorry man, but I highly doubt it. Try using an external CD-rom if you can find one and machine supports booting to USB. Windows has a lot of restrictions on its install. You may be able to install WIndows into a virtual machine, but using Linux to install Windows... Microsoft wouldn't want you doing that now would they. Is the CD bad, or is the drive defective?

There is always qemu if you have oodles of memory just pouring out of your computer.

www.ubuntulinux.org/wiki/WindowsXPUnderQemuHowTo

Don't know if that would help or not.