Yes it does. Thanks - Just a bit confused on how it will recognise this new dvd with the .iso when it would not recognise the factory pressed dvd that I got from the magazine.

Not sure why it doesn't support the factory pressed dvd...

If the dvd drive on the old P3 is working properly it should read both homemade and factory pressed CDs and DVDs.

Is this the original drive that came with the old P3. Perhaps the drive has some kind of malfunction or dirty lens.

The last option is to replace the old worn out drive. A new or refurbished read-only cd/dvd drive could be found for less than $20 if you shop around.

Sorry, I wasn't more helpful, but the last option is what you need to do if all else fails.


- Cheers

Sometimes it helps to burn the cd on a low speed

Yes its the original drive. The strange thing is that I have an old knoppix live CD and it boots with no problems but it just does not seem to be able to boot from a DVD which is why I am not sure if creating an iso and burning it to another DVD will make any difference.

Don't really want to replace the drive because technically I have already replaced the PC, I just wanted to use it to have a look at other distros.

Couple questions

No usb port on that PC?

Can't you install debian via internet/ or cant you boot dvd from hd and install from there??

Don't dvd drives automatically adjusts themselves to read media if it were burned faster?

As an example, If a person burns a disc at 16x and then tried to run it on a slower 4x drive, can this course performance issues?

Yes it has usb ports but bios does not give any option of booting from there or can it still be done?

There is currently no operating system on the hard drive so no option to install from the internet or the hard disk itself.

The drive is probably a CD reader and not a DVD reader. A similar mistake
I made two years ago, I purchased a refurbished 1U rack server for $149. I assumed the drive was a combo drive. It booted a cd disc fine, but it did not boot a dvd disc. I looked at the logo on the front side and to my surprised it was just a cd reader and not a dvd reader. A simple mistake, I overlooked.

Yes

Plop bootmanager works at booting all my usb's on 3 different computers that won't/can't boot from usb

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...highlight=plop

do you have a floppy drive for it??

Plop bootmanager can boot via pxe too
http://www.plop.at/en/bootmanager.html

[QUOTE=dv502;3627879]The drive is probably a CD reader and not a DVD reader.

Yep, that may well be your problem. You could try a distro that has install CDs as well as DVDs, Debian is one example.

It's no use burning the iso if your original dvd didn't boot.

If you have grub installed on your hard drive, you could try this:

1. create a partition large enough to hold the contents of the iso then
copy the contents of the dvd to that partition.
you might as well create the partition that will hold the new linux
system and a swap partition

2. There must be an isolinux.cfg somewhere with entries like

label something
kernel path to somekernelname
append initrd=initrd.img some options here

you can adapt these entries to grub entries.
Let's assume the partition you've copied the contents of the iso is
the second one (if it's not, just replace accordingly)
grub starts counting from 0 so it designates this partition by
hd0,1 (hd0 for first disk and 1 for 2nd partition)

The grub entry then is

title something
root (hd0,1)
kernel path to somekernelname all the options of the 'append' above
initrd initrd.img

reboot

select one of the installation entries
after the system has finished booting launch the setup program if it
doesn't start automatically
There should be a prompt somewhere in the installation program that
lets you select the source of the installation programs (cd-rom, partition, ...)
select the partition where you copied the dvd
...

If you don't have grub, it should be possible to do that with lilo
but I don't use lilo

The other alternative is to create a bootable usb stick (with syslinux
for instance), copy the initial files that the dvd uses to boot
and store the contents of the dvd in a dedicated partition of your hard drive

And yes you can boot usb with plop
(if you have an old pc you must have a floppy drive, you just
1. download and unpack plop
2. cd to the unpacked archive, locate plpbt.img, cd to its directory
3. insert a blank floppy in your drive then run
dd if=plpbt.img of=/dev/fd0
4. leave the floppy in the drive, insert the usb key and reboot
5. when the floppy boots you'll see in the menu an entry for usb
(you can use the shortcut u to boot directly on usb)
)

Yep
smokin vonbiber!

check it out
you can also go get netbootcd and extract the iso, and copy
the kernel/initrd to hd partition(any?)

and boot as vonbiber sadi, using grub

Coolest thing is, using netbootcd(which goes into ram-it's tinycore based)

you can actually Install to the same partition it's booting from!

Yes, it will wipe out netbootcd
but no need to make a new partition

You can also use other distro's to install a distro
Like zoros can install slack
and with slack you can install from dvd iso too
and from net

Unfortunately I found this out the hard way

I do not have grub/lilo installed and yes the PC does have a floppy drive so I have had a look at PLop but it seems like to boot it from a usb stick you have to re-format it to something called 'VFAT'?? I don't really want to reformat my usb stick because I use it in windows as well as linux.

I think netboot will be out of the question because the computer does no have an internet connection because there is not operating system on it, unless there is a way to point it to the dvd files to extract the files it needs to install?

But like I said previously, I can boot into an old Knoppix 3.7 live cd so would it be possible for me to copy the files from the dvd to a usb stick and then copy it to my hard drive from the live cd and then install? If possible - how?
Thanks

If you have a fast internet connection download a net install (if you want Debian) .iso image it will be less than 200mb. Don't try to download the DVD.iso. Burn the .iso to a disk AS A IMAGE at slow speed. Put it in the system and away you go.

A net install CD will set up the network connection for you, you don't need to have a operating system installed, that's what the net install CD is for.

VFAT (aka FAT32) is readable (quite well) by both Windows and Linux out of the box, go ahead and reformat it.