I have done that and all I get in the boot menu is still the floppy and the HD's I hit tab and did the rescan boot record and partitions but still no cdrom shown in list???

A question? the cd I have is ubuntu which I downloaded from the net as an ISO and burnt onto a cd, will that work or should I have just left it as an ISO on the cd???

There is a special way to burn the ISO onto the CD. I'm not familiar with the details of Windows applications for burning CD-ROMs but I know that you don't burn the ISO like an ordinary file. There is some setting in, let's say Nero, that is for burning ISO images.

Nevertheless, if the CD-ROM drive doesn't show up then it may not be whether the ISO image was burned properly. It doesn't look good. I'll look around for the other alternatives that I mentioned.

I am ok with burning ISO's onto cd's as I have done this before with other programs and no problem, I am aware of the procedure and how to do it.

I am out of other ideas for now, the only thing I did think about was maybe putting my 80 gig into my higher spec system and installing linux there and then returning my hd into the old system to see if that would work, but I guess there would be a lot of hardware conflicts if I did that ???

Not if you dont actually install it on the hdd but just put the data on the hdd? Just an idea for the other guys...

When you say just put the data on the HDD, do you mean just copy the files onto the HDD?? or am I really missing the obvious here ??

No. youre not. Reason i was being vague was becuase im not sure how you'd do it. I sorta left that for the others to fill in. Its an idea that should work, if you can find someone that knows how to implement it.

The idea is that you create a bootable partition on the hd in the other pc but with just the cd on it. So that when the hard is in the old computer again it boots the cd from the hard drive? So to speak...

Ok now I see what you mean ! it is an idea that may work but I did boot the old pc into dos before and tried to run the ubuntu start from the cdrom,,, got an error message, cannot be run from dos, but maybe there is a way to start it from a HDD active partition,,,something to try I guess

GustavTheMushroom has a good idea but I don't know the details of implementing it. Meanwhile I have good news. Debian GNU/Linux has a set of bootable floppy disks that allow a network installation. Debian is one of the most popular and most reliable distributions of Linux. The only real problem is that they don't like proprietary software such as Acrobat Reader or Nvidia drivers. They have some of that available in their non-free repository.

Here is a URL to get you started.
http://www.debian.org/distrib/floppyinst

This URL has the actual images to put onto the floppy disks.
http://ftp.debian.org/debian/dists/e...images/floppy/

You can use the RAWRITE.EXE program to put the images onto the floppies. The first floppy to put in the drive is the boot floppy. Hopefully it will ask for the next floppy and so on. You will probably want to mark each floppy disk as boot, cd-drivers, net-drivers-1, net-drivers-2, and root.

Thanks for the links,,
I got the floppy files and wrote them to floppies, then I booted on the boot floppy and first all was well the Debian start screen came up but then it said " boot failed" and gave no explanation as to why
I have tried it several time but the same result...

I really to appreciate all the help you guys are giving me so many thanks again.....

If the boot failed on the first floppy disk then maybe there was an error writing the image to the floppy disk. Try another floppy disk. Format it under Windows before you use the RAWRITE.EXE utility.

WOW can u believe that the first floppy was duff, just my luck, OK well it is now asking for the root floppy so I will continue,, I will be back soon with an update,,, thanks

I really like Debian, you'll find its nearly identical to Ubuntu.

IGF

where can I get a gun??? suicide is always an option

Ok so here is where we are now,

All went well upto the point of mounting the cdrom where it failed, it did identify the cd rom correctly but it said there was a problem with mounting it????

The cd rom works with no errors in read and write but it is about 7 years old now, could that be a factor ??

Do you have the option of performing a network installation? Try that.

As far as the CD-ROM goes the boot loader was probably looking for a Debian CD. It found your Ubuntu CD and didn't know what to do with it.

Don't feel bad. Getting started is the hardest step.

You are right again, the ubuntu cd was in there,,, ok I now have a network doing the install via a mirror sight,,,, fingers crossed,,
wish me luck