Hi all,

I need an advice for my issue. I have a desktop running windows that is getting slower and slower. But I need to have a windows partition for some hardware. I was thinking to install xubuntu (only 198 MB of RAM) on the secondary hard drive. I'm following instructions from here but I have an additional problem: the primary CD/Rom is not working and I cannot boot from the secondary CD/ROM. So I'm trying to install from secondary CD using grubfordos....but it does not work.
I guess the reason is that when I write
on menu.lst I'm telling to grub to look into the primary CD/ROM. The question is: How do I change it in order to tell him to look into the secondary CD/ROM (Drive E: instead of Drive D?

Sorry for having been so long.

Why don't you open the case, remove the broken cd-rom unit, throw it away and set the secondary as primary?. I mean, if it is broken, you won't need anyway ^^

Uh, good point indeed.
I will give it a try, even though I'm not sure to know how to switch the secondary cd-rom to primary

Anyway I bet there is a way to make it boot from secondary cd-rom, think I only need to change something in the menu.lst file

Not real complicated. You'll need a phillips screwdriver(maybe). and most likely ,a pair of needle nose pliers, and a flashlight will help. Depending on the case, and how well you can see the back of the drive, you may not need a screwdriver.

Make sure the PC is off, Open up side panel. From the sounds of it, you're probably gonna have 2 Hard drives on one cable, and your 2 Optical drives on another cable. Disconnect both optical drives. Make a note of which part of the cable is plugged into the "broken" drive(probably the end of the cable).

Look on the back of the drive(and this might require sliding the drive out a bit). It might be easier also if you disconnect the power cable. If you don't want to slide the drive out, use a flashlight to look on the back of the drive, you should see a plastic "jumper" over 2 pins. The link below, will explain the different settings that are likely on your drive. Decide which one you want to do...(Note, I'd recommend Master). If the jumper isn't on what you want it, use the needle nose to move it.

http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-6603_7-...4.html?tag=txt

Reconnect the Data cable, and if you had to remove it to get to the jumper, the power cable. Turn the PC on, and make sure your BIOS is set to boot from the CD/DVD drive. If so, try to boot an Xubuntu live CD.

Now if all this sounds to painful to you(it sounds way more complicated than it is), you could try a Debian Etch Xfce install. It will be fairly similar to Xubuntu, and it will need 3-5 floppies to boot, then as long as it detects a high speed connection, it will install the rest of the OS from the internet(takes about an hour on a 3mb connection).

IGF

Fisrt of all, thank you for your hel, really appreciate it.

I will try to switch the cd-rom. Second option (booting from floppy and then make the rest of installation via net) is difficult, at the moment I'm using an usb modem and I know the next challenge will be configuring it.

Will let you know

Yeah, some distros have a lot of trouble with USB modems. Some have just given up, and bought a $20 ethernet card, and hooked it up that way, and it ran fine.

IGF