Hi,

I often use live-cd distros (such as knoppix) on computers that only have some version of windows installed. Most of the time, I can just boot off the cdrom and get going.

However, some laptops can't boot off the cdrom (which is USB or PCMCIA). In the past, it was easy to have the computer switch to DOS and use Loadlin to load my linux distro from CD. However, loadlin doesn't work on non-dos versions of windows.

Anyone has a method to load a linux kernel (and initrd) from a running WinNT/2K/XP session ? (kicking the windows session out of the memory just like loadlin did with dos).

Once kernel is up and initrd is loaded, my scripts will take care of the rest. I just need a way to bootstrap without a boot device (other than the running windows session).

Floppy is not an option in many cases, since some laptops don't have them anymore.

Thanks.

use vimware software can help u ...not really try it

VMWare would be a good solution if I could install it on the windows machines, but this isn't the case. I need to boot linux off the CD without making significant modifications in the local drive. Thats what knoppix is usually for, but I need some way to invoke the kernel in order to boot knoppix in this environment.