I downloaded the iso files off the internet. I have unpacked them using winrar. I don't have a CD burner to burn them onto cd. I also don't have a floppy drive to boot from floppy. So how do I manage an install of the mandrake iso files? I have winxp pro and my drives are ntfs. I have three drives, one of which a 40gb is completely empty and that is where I want to install Manrake onto. Thanks in advance.

u cannot tell me that it is impossible to borrow ur friends cd rom drive is it? or u dont know anybody with a floppy or optical drive?

I have a cd drive, just no burner. No I don't have access to a burner. I don't have a floppy because I have never needed one. I just want to know if it is possible to boot from a hard that has the iso unpacked on it. I tried just upacking it onto a bare hd but when it tried to boot, this is what I get:

L 99 99 99 99 99 99 (repeated like a thousand times)

anyway. I would just rather try to install straight from the hd.

There is a program called ISO Buster...I have one at home. Search for it on download.com or something to find it. It extracts your iso files, and lets you run them from your pc.

I already said, I unpacked the iso files onto the hard drive. They are not it the form of an iso file. The files on my hd are the exact same as if I burned them onto a cd but they won't boot like they would if they were on a cd. The iso file is designed that you burn it to a cd and it makes it bootable, but when you upack it to a hd, it doesn't work the same way. I need to know how to boot from the UNPACKED files that are on my hd.

As I said before, get Iso Buster...it will do this for you.

NO, IT WON'T. I HAVE TRIED THAT.

Unfortunately while ISO buster will unpack the ISO, it does nothing to help install Mandrake on the drive.

No, you may want to check out the places that sell the CD's for 1.99 USD.

It may also be possible to start the install from a USB key, for an internet based install but this may be a bit arduous.

Anyway, I went ahead and emailed myself the boot.iso file from the unpacked mandrake iso. I then went to a friend's and burned it. that was the easieast answer, I didn't want to transfer all 700mb to his comp since he has a slow connection. The boot.iso works.

It works for me...I did an install of Windoze XP, and it worked flawlessly...I don't know what version you have...

Dunno what you are talking about.

Unpacking the ISO from the Mandrake CD will merely leave you with the RPM tree on your XP partition.

It will not install Mandrake or permit you to do so as the installer cannot initially read from the NTFS source until the system is up.


You say "I did an install of Windoze XP, and it worked flawlessly". however we are talking about installing Mandrake not XP, or did you mean something else?

yea me too, i dont get what he is talking about, but congrats for burning the boot.iso, seemed to be the best answer.

I do realize that we're talking about Mandrake here, and I was trying to help a fellow MDK user out with a program that I have used in the past that has gotten me out of some jams...(never tried it in Linux though, I must admit). It doesn't surprise me though that some people on this board (which has a not so nice reputation as far as user-friendlyness is concerned) like to get upset and USE CAPS, etc, and try to flame. I am simply volunteering my time (which I don't have a lot of to post on forums & such), but I do feel that I should try to give back to others who need help provided I can help them out with some of my *limited* knowledge of Linux.

That being said, good luck with you installs. I hope you find your solution.

"It doesn't surprise me though that some people on this board (which has a not so nice reputation as far as user-friendlyness is concerned) like to get upset and USE CAPS, etc, and try to flame. I am simply volunteering my time (which I don't have a lot of to post on forums & such), but I do feel that I should try to give back to others who need help provided I can help them out with some of my *limited* knowledge of Linux. "

Pardon me, but you don't corner the market on this stuff so to speak.

Even those "CAPS USERS" are doing the same giving their time and effort to help others out.

There was nothing "wrong" with your post, other than it didn't make any sense to any of us because it did not seem tied to the questions posed, nor did you explain what you meant given our perplexity.

The latter would have been the correct course of action.

As far as "USER FRIENDLYNESS" this board seems to be pretty good to me.

The only times that this is not the case is when

1) Arguments arise between members.
2) A newbie posts a question but is completely unwilling to do any work themselves.

The latter will always cause flaming after people have tried to nudge the person in the right direction.
However a lot of leeway is given here before anything like this seems to occur.

I've seen newbies post "How do I create a floppy boot disk" to which someone answered.

As root in a terminal, and "man mkbootdisk" or "mkbootdisk --help".

Which is a great answer.

Now the newbie posting the question has show that they know how to bring up the console, still they follow up by posting...

"That was of no help, I need a STEP BY STEP GUIDE."

Yeah right. This deserves persistent and constant flaming, yet there is a rather surprising amount of restraint here. More so than most boards that I have seen.

You were not flamed, but your post was non-sensical.

I have always found this board to be friendly. but stop and think about how many questions are posted daily that could have been answered by reading the f-----g manual. Try asking these questions on a BSD forum and many times all you will get in reply is RTFM.