HD Install :: Can do DSL Poorman's Install, now how to do a prop

I have done a Poormans Install of DSL on my 166mhz cpu 32mb ram 4gb hd computer by making a bootfloppy and copying the knoppix file to my C drive in Windows 95. My understanding of this install is that it is effectively the same as using a live cd.

I have tried to do a hard drive install from cd but am unable to boot from either cd or bootfloppy. Is there now some way of transforming (or whatever) the Poorman's Install into a proper hard drive install, or some other way of doing a hard drive install?

(I do not seem to have access to Windows 95 on the 4gb hd, as before doing the Poormans Install I cloned my original Windows 95 hard disk (with Knoppix in C) to the 4gb disk after having formatted it to fat32 instead of fat16. This didn't seem to stop the DSL Poormans Install).

If you repartition your hard drive, it is possible to use the poormans install in order to create a hard disk install.

However, you will need to keep your "poormans" partition intact until the installation is complete.

My advice:

Create a 128MB FAT or FAT32 partition for your poormans install (KNOPPIX file) and DOS swap file (partition hda1)

Then use the remaining 3.8 GB to make and format a linux EXT2 partition for your hard drive install (partition hda2)

Then do your hard disk install to /dev/hda2.

Once your hard disk install is up and running, delete your original poormans partition and create a 128MB linux swap partition and format it.

Be sure that you backup all of your old MSDOS/Win95 drivers so that you can re-install them later if needed.

Good Luck.

Quote (cbagger01 @ Sep. 05 2005,11:02)

Thank you very much Cbagger for this advice.

I am new to repartitoning. I am not clear on where my Windows 95 OS will be (in fact I do not know where it is now. I cannot boot into it)? You do not mention it. Are you suggesting that I reformat the whole drive and start again with no Windows?

With best wishes,

Windows is usually locaed in your first partition, ie: hda1 but sometimes it is located in a later partition if you have a "diagnostics partition" from your computer manufacturer.

So the best way to find it is to run cfdisk on the drive and see where the largest partition is located. This is usually your windows partition.

Of course you can always look at the contents by opening up an emelfm window and navigate to the /mnt directory.

To look at hda1, for example, you would Right-Click on the hda1 mountpoint directory and choose "Mount" from the context menu.

If you wish to keep Windows and install DSL to a new hard drive partition, then you will probably need to resize your existing Windows partition to a smaller size. If you can free up 300-500MB of disk space, you can do a full hard drive install of DSL with a little room to spare for new program installs. There is a commercial program called "Partition Magic" that can do this, but there is also a Free Linux program called "parted" that can do this. Partition Magic is easier to use, but parted also works well for MSDOS/Win95/Win98/WinME systems. But you will probably first need to delete some unneeded files on your "C:\" drive in order to make room.

First, you need to be able to boot into Windows 95.

If you cannot boot into it and you have a Win95 boot floppy lying around, boot with this floppy and then use the DOS fdisk command to restore your bootsector

This is done with the command:

FDISK /MBR

You may also be able to get into Windows directly by downloading the SmartBootManager on a different computer and then make a SmartBootManager floppy disk. Then use this floppy disk to find and boot your Windows partition.

Thanks for the informative reply CB. Am having hardware difficulties at present, but intend to get back to DSL in due course.

Next Page...
original here.