Installing SuSE on a computer without and bootable devices (but C:/)

gusee88 · 10-29-2006, 12:35 AM

Hi,

Ok...i have an NEC laptop, no cdrom, floppy drives, and my bios is pretty old so I can't boot from anything else.
So what i did was pull out my Harddrive, stick it into a pc, and then installed SuSE using the desktops cdrom drive.
Now, I had a feeling this wouldn't work, (but I did it anyways), i stuck the harddrive back in to the laptop, and it stops booting when it can't find /hda6, and other FATAL errors about the fan etc.
What can/should I do now?
I am extremely new to suse/linux, and I don't know whether the other threads on this site is directed at my problem...so sorry if I am repeating the issue.

arochester · 10-29-2006, 03:02 AM

Hi gusee88

Your laptop does sound old. How much RAM does it have and how big is the hard drive?

gusee88 · 10-29-2006, 08:34 AM

Hi

its got 128, and about 60 gigs hd.

arochester · 10-29-2006, 08:54 AM

128Mb of RAM isn't enough for SUSE. SUSE 10.1 needs 256Mb minimum - 512 recommended.

At 128Mb you're looking at something like Zenwalk or Xubuntu. They are both Xface, so there will be no pretty KDE or Gnome interface.

At 32 Mb you can install DSL (Damn Small Linux) which has a floppy install but it is pretty basic.

gusee88 · 10-29-2006, 09:48 AM

Oh okay, thanks (i should have checked that up before playing around)

thank you very very much

gusee88 · 10-31-2006, 05:29 PM

Hey Arochester,
Okay so i got dsl (sounded interesting enough), what would i do now. What i've tried with other os is removing the laptop hardrive, and connecting it to a desktop and using it's cdrom, but i can't use it if i take it out.
this is crazy. do you know any operating systems that don't mind moving from system to system? just so i can get the laptop to boot up?

arochester · 11-01-2006, 03:41 AM

Quote:

an NEC laptop, no cdrom, floppy drives, and my bios is pretty old

Does this mean you have or haven't got a floppy drive?

If you have a floppy drive look at http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/install_from_floppy.html

Kavon89 · 11-01-2006, 02:24 PM

If you take out all HDs from the installation system and just have the laptop HD, then it won't give you that error. I'm only 70% sure on that... i had an issue similar to yours with the HD finding error, i think its related to it searching for the actual main HD. I'm guessing you stuck the laptop HD in the Slave cable which will give you that error. Put it into the Master cable and unplug any other HD's, it will work when u put it on your laptop.

gusee88 · 11-04-2006, 03:32 PM

Nope - no floppy drive, (or any other drives)

Kavon, I did remove all the other harddrives (Coz, being as unlucky as I am, I didn't want to risk overwriting my desktop hd by accident). BUT i do remember having it on cable select, so i didn't have to keep switching it from slave and master. Would that have been a problem?

Kavon89 · 11-04-2006, 10:41 PM

If you put it on cable select and put the drive into the slave port on the cable, that might cause a problem. Try finding a jumper and put your hard drive on master, then plug it into the master port on the ribbon cable (assuming you have an IDE hard drive.)

If your laptop has internet access, try this.

Read the top, then skip down to the SuSE 10.X instructions. The install discribed in that link is your best bet if the cable stuff doesn't work out.

Kavon89 · 11-04-2006, 10:46 PM

I reccomend Xubuntu also, see if you can use those instructions to install Xubuntu.

gusee88 · 11-07-2006, 10:04 AM

Thanks I will give both suggestions a try and let you know how it goes. Thank you for helping out.

---
Keeping fingers crossed!

gusee88 · 11-08-2006, 11:48 AM

Hey Kavon,
Thank you so much, changing the jumpers around worked.
Im keeping to using dsl 3 at the moment. I have downloaded xubuntu, but im going to need a free weekend to try it out on this system.
With dsl3 everything is working great, except for the mouse (im just going to use an usb one for the moment).
Thanks for your help!