Ok, so my friend decided to try out Slackware 9.0 as his first Linux distro. (no comments on ths please, I'm helping him). I gave him my ISO image (which works, just made it the other day and used it to install Slacky on my old comp). He's got a Dell 8200 that originally had windows xp home on it. We formatted it, and put in the Slackware CD and shut it off. A few minutes later we booted up but only got the blinking white cursor at the top left of the screen.

We tried to do it on his other ocmputer (also a Dell) but nothing happened at all. It's not a bad CD cause it boots up on my computer. What's wrong? The CD-ROM drive is working fine cause we were playing CD's on it. Is it the way Dell makes their computers?

Are you sure that his CD-rom is set to be bootable in the BIOS? Using something as difficult as Slackware (or so I hear) I can't imagine that you wouldn't know to check that, so don't take it as an insult if you did. It's just the only thing I can think of that sounds like it fits that situation.

Yes, he can boot from the CD-ROM drive.

I know it can't be that it's a dell, I just used Knoppix on my brothers computer P3 1.1 with no problems. It detected all the hardware perfectly and was able to surf the net, use the integrated sound card, etc.

Ekim - I have 2 PC's, and one can boot from the Slack v9 CD just fine, the other won't. It's the exact same CD, so I have no idea why this is the case. I suggest downloading the boot, install.1, and install.2 floppies. Change the BIOS to boot from the floppy first, insert the boot floppy, and reboot. That should put you on your way -- J.W.

Yeah I had to have a floppy in to boot from my ISO, then again after installing all I got was a blinking white cursor and a log in screen. After logging in it was still the black screen and white cursor, no OS in sight. Maybe I just dont know what I am doing. But mine SW 9.0 made a boot disk for me.