I am currently using a Pentium 2 400MHz with Windows 2000 and I want to install Fedora Core 3. The system has all the required system jargon. But my catch 22 is that my CD-ROM drive can't read the install discs i created, from the ISOs (got them from computer magazine APC, January 2005 issue). I've tried burning at different speeds and extracting the files from the image and making a bootable CD, but to no avail.

I have a Compaq Presario notebook running Windows XP (this system has the CD burner). Is it possible to run a network cable between the two systems and PXE boot to the Fedora installation? If so, how?

I'm a newbie to Linux and I want to start with Fedora, mainly because of stability and performance. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

You'll probably be unsuprised to hear that running Windows restricts your options a lot...

You can't set up the PXE boot stuff on Windows to boot your Pentium machine with, but you can obviously use virtual machine software (or dual-boot) to install a copy of Fedora Core on your laptop and setup the network boot system on that.

thanks for the tip hob

i can't dual-boot at the moment because i can't resize the windows partitions with the software i have (paragon partition manager 2002)

i'm looking to get partition magic 8 so that will be a big help

is there a way I can mount the ISO files on my windows machine as a pseudo-disk drive and boot to those?

just another note to hob

the laptop cannot be dual-booted, as the BIOS contains instructions to ask for a boot password. It can't be unlocked because it's already hard-coded to the HDD and there's no way of altering it without flashing the BIOS, which i'm not confident in doing

In my opinion, the security measures on the notebook are totally unnecessary. They just think that people will break it or something.

The real problem is booting, since once you've booted with Anaconda there are lots of ways for it to get the rest of the installation files.

Unfortunately, kernel 2.6 doesn't support boot floppies. Your boot options are: CD/DVD, PXE and USB.

I would boot the first disc on another PC just to make sure that your ISOs and discs are OK. If so the problem is likely to be that certain CD drives just don't properly support the "ISOLINUX" software used to boot installers from disc. For example, my workstation boots all version of Fedora and SUSE 9.1 and above, but won't boot SUSE 8.2 discs at all.

Your solutions are then probably: update the drive firmware, replace the drive, replace the computer (this is your perfect excuse to get a newer one ), or use a distro that will boot (try FC 4 test 1 !).

thanks for the tip hob, yet i cannot download FC4 Test 1, as I don't have a broadband connection
plus, the drive is irreplaceable and i can't find a firmware update anywhere
and as I'm a teen I can't replace my system yet (I will soon though)

I might just get a copy of the Australian Linux Journal, which has the FC3 discs ready

Good luck.

Don't be too discouraged if it doesn't work - as I said, old CD-ROM drives sometimes just don't work right. By coincidence I replaced a 24x CD-ROM drive a couple of days ago because it wouldn't boot off known-good Linux discs.

Would it be possible to mount a drive letter to a folder containing the ISOs (using the W2K machine) and using a third party bootloader to boot to the first ISO and take it from there?

I haven't actually used any third-party boot loaders for many years, so I don't know.

The specific boot loader would have to be able to connect to the XP network share holding the ISO, and then use the ISO file as a virtual CD-ROM drive.