HD Install :: booting DSL on an old laptop

I want to run DSL on my old laptop (Pentium 90 MHz) which already has Windows 98SE installed on a single hard disk, which cannot boot from CD. So I found instructions on the DSL wiki pages (http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/wiki/index.php/Loadlin_Install, to use Loadlin.exe to boot DSL from files placed on the hard disk. I followed the instructions but cannot get it to work.
I put the necessary lines of code into config.sys and created options.txt, but when the PC boots, and it loads the config.sys menu with windows and linux, I select linux and it starts to boot but then states it cannot find the kernel image.

So I tried it the other way that was mentioned, i.e. after it gets to the menu, I go the command prompt (pressing SHIFT-F5 to get to the DOS prompt), and go into the isolinux directory, and then run the command "loadlin @options.txt" and it then does load, although as the PC is slow it takes ages to load.

Any ideas why it will not work from the config.sys file, i.e.
shell=c:\isolinux\loadlin.exe @c:\isolinux\options.txt
?

If you want you may try the embedded version of DSL which comes along with qemu. There wont be any booting issues. This is just an alternative suggestion.

I have no idea why isolinux would be on a windows partition.
There is a new boot floppy available for download which has two sample windows bat files, using linld and loadlin. Both will work on win9x. All that is required are three files:

c:\knoppix\knoppix
c:\linux24
c:\minirt24.gz

You might want to download it and take a here for the bootfloppy-utils.img

Use rawwrite to write this file to a floppy.
Test first by booting from the floppy.
Copy the one you like, linld or loadlin

original here.