[parttimetechdude]

I'm in need of some linux configuring help badly!


I bought a Shuttle XP computer that came with Linux. This shuttle doesn't have a CD drive, so I connected a USB cd writer/reader.

The retailer said that I should be able to access bios and change the boot order to boot from USB...which I already thought was odd, since I never really heard Bios and Linux being in the same sentence.

When I got to trying to set it up, I ran into exactly the problem I thought I would. At the start screen, it told me to press f-11 to enter setup or else it would boot Fedora fc8 as the OS. So I hit the button and now I have NO CLUE how to get it to boot from usb-CD so I can install XP-Pro since this is only for business use.

Please help someone! I'll be obcessivly checking back on this forum since I kind of have to have it set up and running by tmr morning....hopefully someone will see this sooner than later!!

specs of new computer.

shuttle xpc,
OS: Fedora (2.6.23.1-42. fc8)

Want to install: Windows XP-PRO using a usb-CD drive.

[saikee]

I think you have two problems.

Problem 1 - Is you CD drive booting as expected?

Problem 2 - How to installed XP on a PC loaded with Fedora?

You haven't told us what is the situation of problem 1. Can you put a XP installation CD in the drive to check if it work? It is every PC owner's God-given right to be able to select which medium to boot first. You do this by telling the Bios. If your PC does not support it then this is another matter but If you have a Fedora 8 PC then it is modern and booting off a USB CD drive is common.

On the problem 2 the answer is actually very simple. If you have "unallocated" hard disk space then XP can be installed in it. All XP asks is just an empty space for a primary partition, possibly about 25 to 40Gb.

My prediction is your hard disk may have been used up by Fedora and so you may have to "resize" the partitions to smaller sizes and squeeze extra space for a primary partition for XP. This depends on how your Fedora has been set up. The commonly used tools to resize a partition is gparted or Parted Magic both have Live CD downloadable from their web sites.

If your Fedora is using LVM then it may be a long struggle to resize it as it is not supported by the standard programs like gparted.

If you are in doubt show us the output of

/sbin/fdisk -l

[kickback999]

Dunno why bios would be odd on a Linux computer??
Set usb device or cd drive as your first boot device.
If you dont know where to find the boot device look through the menus until you find a list with
1. hard drive
2. cd rom
3. Removable.
or something like that (device names should be listed) change cd to 1, or if that doesnt work set it to usb or removable?.
Try them anyway one should work (I never booted from usb before)
BTW you should press delete to get into the bios, not f11.

[monckywrench]

What I'd do is open the Shuttle, hang a ribbon cable from the controller, and use a standard CD or DVD drive instead. (Always keep spare drives around for this sort of thing if you work on computers).

You could also slave the drive into a desktop, install without activation (activate later), sysprep, reinstall the drive in the Shuttle, boot and press on with the rest of the job.

Here's a good thread on doing a motherboard swap (essentially the same thing):
http://episteme.arstechnica.com/eve/...4/m/1400925745

While you are at it, since it's a business machine, I suggest Ghosting or other backup to bootable media solution. Even though the Shuttle is crippled due to lack of CD drive, you can still load a new drive or reimage the old one in another PC.

[minoruhackerguy]

Ok, I think a good place to start would be for you to tell us what possible devices you have to boot from. So, go into the bios and look at your device boot order. Send the possibilities to us and we might be able to help. You might have more than one usb bootable setup. (usb-hdd,usb-zip,etc...)

Oh, and, the whole "bios not on linux pc's" thing.. are you thinking of the master boot record? That get's replaced with Grub or Lilo most of the time, but you ALWAYS have bios. It's in a type of "Read-Only" memory that doesn't get changed. You CAN change it, it just takes special tools to do it.