[Westwales] Linux with XP

[Pax]

hOn Fri, 21 Apr 2006 22:20:16 +0100
Colin Sauze <colinsauze at gmail.com> wrote:

> Pax wrote:
> 
> It is reading from the cdrom
> >and printing to the screen to tell me it can't find the cdrom, recursive or what!
> >
> 
> When you boot from CD's the BIOS loads a floppy disk image off the CD 
> which in turn loads up the OS and CD-ROM drivers. This fools the OS into 
> thinking its booted from a floppy and it accesses the boot image with 
> the same calls it accesses a floppy with (this also makes the floppy 
> drive inaccessible!).  So this might explain this error. Saying t
> modern BIOSes have another mode for booting CDs without needing to 
> emulate floppies and a lot of Linux distros seem to be converting to 
> this method although I don't know if Fedora is amongst these. Problem 
> with this method is that older PCs just flat out refuse to recognise the 
> CD as bootable so they aren't that common yet.

Many of the CDs I've taken from magazines(mostly Linux Format) have failed
to boot as advertised, but the 'I can't find your drive!' might be a problem
specific to Fedora/Red Hat, on reflection. I'll have to work through my collection of CDs and
report back.

> Have you got some kind of weird CD-ROM drive?

No, if there is weirdness it lies with the disks not the drives.

	Anyway, I guddled about in my bag of goodies and found a copy of Linex ( the Distro
> >from Extremadura) which did boot, and not only did it boot but it presented me with a copy
> >of Qtpartman (is that right?) which I think somebody mentioned works? yes? 
> >
> Yeah it should do the job providing its got NTFS resizing support.

And How would I know? 

> >So, by the time
> >I've done a full day's teaching, and faffed around with the boxes it was too late to install.
> >I have a couple of the worst infected boxes on defrag and will go ahead with Install on Monday,
> >subject to any cautions warnings or advice that might appear on the group over the weekend.
> >  
> >
> 
> >	If you are thinking of offering advice, especially where Windows is concerned, please
> >treat me gently. I am probably coming from the opposite direction to everybody else, I have been
> >running Linux for ten years, whereas, before I took this job, my only experience with Windows
> >was a nightmare three months in 1998, that I prefer not to recall.

> >
> What i'd do with the window systems is to setup one PC perfectly (you'll 
> need to do this once per type of machine as drivers etc will vary) and 
> with the smallest windows partition you can get away with. Then boot a 
> Linux liveCD and use dd to copy the partition to an image file onto a 
> network drive or onto a DVD.
> 
I don't actually need to play about with the system, qua system, at all.
Once I am confident of getting Linux up and running with XP on one box I'll
get the students to install it on the required number of other boxes as an
exercise.

Thanks

Bernard