I have a second hand HP Omnibook 800 CT, an external floppy disk drive and an external cd-rom (8x) drive, and I would like to have either Puppy Linux or Damn Small Linux as OS on this computer. At present there is no OS on the computer; it seems win 95 and win 98 has been the previous OS, but they have been removed by the last owner. My problems are several. First of all English is not my native language, so pardon my clumsy formulations. Second, am a nube when it comes to computers, so I don't know the right words when it comes to formulating questions on computing. I'll give it a shot anyway, though.

It seems my computer is booting from the floppy disk (PRO200(B) PCI Ethernet Adapter, LAN Driver, Diskette Version 1.44 - I got this floppy disk from the guy who sold me the computer), but I would like it to boot from the cd-rom drive, as I have some bootable Linux distributions on a cd. I am not sure if it is BIOS or DOS I am writing commands in (any comments on this would be great), but when I write g: I find the cd-rom drive, and when I write Dir/p it lists the directions on the cd. But how do I get my computer to boot from g: ? While I am writing my computer is currently booting from the floppy disk (as far as I can understand), and I am not sure if this is a problem when it comes to booting from the cd? Is there any command I could write which will make my computer boot from the cd? All I am able to do now is view the different directions within the cd. However, if I remove the floppy disk and restart the computer, the computer says: Microsoft windows 98 startup menu, then lists some options, then says: Warning: Windows has detected a registry/configuration error. Choose, command prompt only, and run SCANREG. Obviously the computer cannot find windows on c: as the OS has been removed by the last owner, but when I try typing g: it cannot find the drive (Invalid drive specification). I find this somewhat curious as it found it while booting from the floppy disk drive. However, it finds something on d: although I'm not sure what this is (it says: Volume in drive D is DATA) (omni80~1).
Anyway, my main question is how I get the computer to boot from the cd so that I can install some tiny Linux distribution on in. If anyone knows how, please, please help me.

http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/wiki/...

It is too old to boot from CD would be my guess. It might only boot from "pressed" CD's and not CD-R's if at all. You need a floppy boot disk that allows the system to be taught enough to further install from a CD.

"Best Practices", Event viewer, host file, perfmon, are in my top 10

if you have access to another newer computer, you can boot from the cd's and create the boot floppy. I would use damn small linux, as 48 mb of ram is not enough for puppy. If I remember correctly, you need Internet access to create the boot floppy for dsl, the way I am proposing

larry

another option is to pull the hard drive and connect it to a newer desk top. you would need an adapter for that.

larry

Thank you all for valuable comments, it is of great help to me:) As I have access to another newer computer I will try to make a boot floppy and use damn small linux; if that doesn't work I'll try out the newer desk top - adapter solution. I'll probably come back with more questions if I don't get any further on my own. This site is really great for getting help on computer-problems!