installing win over lin without disk drive!?!?!?

djkoe · 01-01-2004, 12:59 PM

hi
how can i install windows while i have Linux Red Hat now.
i don't have a 3,5 inch disk drive or some other bootable disk device (exept for my hdd)
i cán't enter my bios to change it to cd rom booting so i can't boot from cd rom too...
i do have a cd rom player but i need windows again
and i want to remove linux
i have about 1.5 gig free on my harddisk.
please help me!!!!!!!!!!
thanx!

Demonbane · 01-01-2004, 01:24 PM

So basically you have to boot into DOS without using a CDROM or floppy disk.
Try this:
Download
http://ryantsai.ozforces.com.au/memdisk
and
http://ryantsai.ozforces.com.au/98boot.img
put them in your /boot, then add this to your /boot/grub/grub.conf

Code:

title dos
kernel /boot/memdisk
initrd /boot/98boot.img

Reboot and choose dos, it'll load 98boot.img which is an uncompressed image of win98se startup disk, with the oaksys cdrom driver, you can then do your partitioning/formatting/installation.
This method is also useful for booting floppies without using the actual floppy, or you can even merge a number of floppies into one image so you don't have to swap disks, and it loads much faster than the floppy drive. I use it to for my partition magic and ghost bootdisks.
This probably works with lilo as well(don't see any reason why not) but I haven't tried it.

Oh and one thing you need to be careful of is that if you delete the linux partitions with fdisk, then grub will fail to load when you reboot. Therefore if you want to get rid of linux, first create a fat32 partition out of your free disk space, install windows in there, then remove the linux partitions once windows is up and running.

kbcnetau · 01-01-2004, 03:55 PM

Nearly the opposite problem to mine: <http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...hreadid=130488>

Whilst this technique doesn't work for installing SuSE Linux, you may be able to do the installation by putting the laptop hard disc in a desktop machine with bootable CD drive.

I have had success in the past moving hard discs loaded with Windows 95 and 98 between machines. You generally have to change a load of hardware settings in Windows when you move the disc between dissimilar machines so it is VERY IMPORTANT that your installation is of the pre-install/OEM type where all the drivers from the Windows CD are installed somewhere on the hard disc.

NOTES

1) "Your Mileage May Vary" - dependant on compatibility with hardware. For instance, don't install Windows with a USB keyboard, then expect it to work on a laptop that only has a PS/2 trackstick!
2) May not work AT ALL with modern Windozes, especially those that tie themselves to hardware serial numbers.
3) Running a laptop (2.5 inch) drive in a desktop (3.5 inch) requires an adaptor. I got mine for about 10USD through Ebay.

I run Linux day-to-day (and have for nearly three years), but have my laptop set up for dual boot for those very, very, rare occurences when I need to use Windows - normally Windows only hardware configuration programmes. If you have the hard disc space, I would recommend this approach.

Cheers

Matthew