Good morning. I have come to attempt to utilize Linux but have no idea what I am doing. I downloaded Puppy 4.1 to a flash drive. Can I somehow open and investigate without being in danger of Windows XP detecting my actions and frying my drive? Seriously, any help would be appreciated.

So you have got a new puppy? What kind?

If your bios can boot from the flash drive, then you should be able to boot your Puppy Linux, and see if the Puppy will sit, get your newspaper, and lick your face. If all goes well, Puppy will wag his tail too!

Your harddrive is not needed to run from the Flash drive, so you can run only from the Flash drive.

While you are at it, you can teach Puppy a new trick with the following command:

$ mv Windows /dev/null

Did you just save the .iso file onto the memory stick or did you install puppy to the flash drive? It sounds like you saved the .iso file to the drive and what you have to do is burn a cd and boot to it i think and then select the install to usb device option and boot it to the usb device. Pretty sure there are lots more installation options but this is the only i'm familiar with with puppy. Once you have puppy installed onto the flash drive follow the directions from the previous post. Hope this helps.

This will show you how to install puppy linux on a usb drive.

http://www.pendrivelinux.com/2006/03...-linux-on-usb/

1. As the previous posters already said, you can't boot puppy (or *any* operating system) without bootable media.

2. There are lots of options for creating "bootable media", including your hard drive (by doing an actual install), using a CD/DVD or, in many cases, using a bootable USB drive.

3. Yet another option is using a VM (like VMWare player for VBox - both free, both run quite nicely under Windows). That's how I happen to use Puppy Linux (I also have many other OS's: on different multi-boot PCs, or on VM's).

4. Back to your original question: here's another good link for getting Puppy Linux running on a USB stick:

http://puppylinux.com/flash-puppy.htm

'Hope that helps .. PSM

PS:
Just in case... Yes, jiobo *was* joking in his post. Don't do that ;-)!

Thanks for all your replys. Jiobo, you shouldn't play with the new folks...it might get us in trouble.

a new Puppy get you in trouble?

Post again if you have any problems getting that Puppy to sit and wag his tail.

Assuming you "downloaded" Puppy directly to the USB drive there should be one file on the drive called Puppysomething.ISO. If this is the case you use an ISO burning program like Nero to make a bootable live CD.

Once the CD is made you can disconnect your XP hard drive (with the power off , after a proper shutdown) completely so that there is no chance that the system will boot to XP and conversely no chance that Puppy can do anything to your hard drive. There may be some bios or boot option changes required.



If what you intended to say was that you have already got Puppy working from a live CD and you have used the universal installer to make a bootable USB drive than I suggest you do the same thing as above. Don't even have your XP disk plugged in when you boot to Puppy on the USB key.

Please let us know exactly what you have done so far...

What I had hoped to do was download to the USB and boot from there. If I have to burn a CD I may as well download directly to that, it seems to me. I have since downloaded Feather to the USB but can't boot from that either.

What you are downloading is an iso file. These are "Disk Images" and bust be burned onto a CD with software that handles burning images. You can't just copy the .iso file onto a CD or the USB drive, it will not work.

InfraRecorder is a free and open source program that will do this. Once you have it, choose the "Actions" menu and then "Burn Image", and choose your iso file. Then you can burn the cd and be able to boot from it.

Agreed!

Try the above links that explain how to install the Puppy Linux onto the USB Flash Drive, then set your BIOS to boot from USB, and plug the USB Puppy in the USB Drive, and boot it. Tell us if that Puppy wags his tail and sits.

You are not downloading files that are directly bootable, you are downloading "ISO" files. At this point the easiest thing for you to do is burn a CD. It won't kill you, I promise. Find an ISO burning program and burn a disk.

If you don't already have NERO or some other software that will burn ISO files http://infrarecorder.org/ that claudius753 mentioned looks like a great free solution.

From their website:

Features...Record disc images (ISO and BIN/CUE).