I'm very sorry to post another thread similar to the one I posted hours earlier. It's an update.

I've spent a couple of hours searching Google and the various Linux boards around. It would seem that my problem installing from a USB CDROM drive is a fairly common one.

However, all I find are a lot of empty threads, and no solutions. There has got to be a solution.

The closest I've found are several obscure posts suggesting that a kernel be compiled with USB support.

I have no idea how to do that when my computer is completely blank. I have no idea how to do it at all.

The Slackware 9.1 installation mentions a possible solution would be to force detection of my drive (no idea how, the example at boot doesn't work) or to copy files to the HD and boot from there. However, I can't even access my CDROM... how do I copy files from it? I don't know what files to copy, too.

So... new question. Anyone who has successfully performed an install solely from a USB CDROM drive, please please please let me know what distribution you are using, and what version, and I'll order it and hopefully will be able to get a working OS up.

If I remember right, I found posts by Debian, Mandrake, Red Hat and Slackware users who had my problem.

This is pretty insane... these are popular distributions, and I can't believe I can't find an answer for this problem.

On the really bright side, messing around with the extremely limited shell provided by the Slackware install disk was fun! Reminds me so much of DOS, which I loved. The ability to switch to different consoles via Alt-Fxxx is awesome, and so is tab completion. I'm so in love with the command prompt right now. =p DOS could never do that stuff.

Ren

The problem may not be a linux distribution problem. When does your bios start your usb? Most start them after boot. If this is the case, then the usb cdrom would not be detected. In short, is your bios capable of booting from a usb device?

you could try starting with a damn small linux that you can load from floppy, and then move on from there if you cant enable boot from usb in bios.

Thanks for the responses.

- Yes, my bios supports USB booting.
- No, I don't have a floppy drive.

For anyone else having this problem, Damn Small Linux and Knoppix won't detect the USB drives too (they exit to a limited shell right after booting up), so save yourself a download/some money.

Ren