Hey guys,
I am trying to install Mandrake linux 9.0 on my IBM Thinkpad X23. I am unable to get the thing to boot from my pcmcia DVD-ROM and I do not have an external floppy drive to create a boot disk. Is there some way I can install directly from the hard drive from within my already existing windows XP installation? I have no clue of any other way to do this because I can't boot from anything but the hard drive. I have successfully installed this same version using the same discs on my desktop system and it worked fine so I just need help getting the install program to run under these circumstances. I am kinda desperate here because I need to have this working in 2 days for a presentation. Please help.

Forgot to mention that I have copied the contents of all 3 install CDs to the hard drive. Is there some way to boot from this directory as if it were the CD?

I don't think you're going to make your presentation on time like that. You might be able to do it using Loadlin. I don't know how it would be done with Mandrake, but the Slackware website explains how to do it in their FAQ at this web address. However, the syntax might be different for Mandrake than for Slackware. This is at least a starting point for you to maybe search at the mandrake website. Good luck.

Actually,
I was looking around in windows and found where you can add items to the boot menu. I am going to try adding an item that points to the directy where I copied all of the CDs which would contain the boot info just like it was on the CD and see if it will boot like that.