Toshiba Satellite 1415-s173 Laptop
Windows XP

The cd drive on this computer stopped working a few years ago. When it first broke I thought the drive was malfuntioning, so I bought a new one and replaced it. The new cd drive did not work either. It doesn't read any discs, doesn't boot from it. So I took the computer to a repair shop and they said the IDE controller for the drive went out and it isn't easy or cheap to replace. So I haven't fixed it.
Now, the computer works fine, I am using it to type this, but I have since bought a new desktop and much better laptop. I want to use this one to try linux. The problem is that I can't boot the computer from CD. I went in the bios and the boot options are: hdd, fdd, cdrom, lan. Someone suggested to insert a usb stick to the port and boot that way, but the computer doesn't provide power to the usb (USB 1.1, no 2.0) ports until it is already booting windows. Another person suggested installing through floppy, but how many discs would I need to install a 700mb OS? Way too many.
Few years ago, when I was able to use the cd drive, I "downloaded" some Linux distros from FTP servers. So, instead of copying the .iso files from these servers, could I install to the computer directly, booting from LAN? If so, how do I set up for such task? Is there another way to make my computer boot from a USB drive if there is no option in bios?

Hope someone can help, I really would like to remove WinXP from this laptop.

Thanks

Hello moises73 and welcome to PCHF,

Il ,mark this thread open so it attracts our highly skilled tech staff.

a suggestion is you could use an external CD drive.

Also can i ask, did you make your memory stick bootable when you tried to install linux on it?

Regards,

Clever_Duck

I tried an extenal cd rom, and I made the thumb drive bootable, but the computer won't read from them until after it starts booting windows

Try giving this a read. - http://www.stanford.edu/~alfw/PXE-Kickstart/PXE-Kickstart.html

It tells you how to pxe boot a linux install. I've done this myself installing windows on my tablet pc that doesn't have a cd rom a few times.

So I was looking around the net some more and I found this site:

Install any Linux distro directly from hard disk without burning any DVD - instant fundas

You don't need a disc or even a cd drive to do it. Apparently you just have the .iso image saved to the windows partition and then set the windows boot sequence to look for it. So I got exited and before I finished reading the instructions, I used Partition Magic to set a partition for Linux. It all went well till the set up was done. Now the computer won't boot at all. It starts up with the bios message then it says "Error loading operating system" Its been sitting on that screen for 3 hours and I know is not going anywhere.
I should have finish reading since I know from previews Linux installs that you can set the partitions while installing. Or I could just done a live testing without installing. Now I doubt that I can bring the computer back to life without a optical drive.

I found, though, PXE installs, but I am so confused about how to set up. Plus I don't have a switch, only a router.

Hi moises73 - Welcome to PCHF!!!

It looks like the only way you're going to be able to install linux is via PXE. You'll need a spare pc to setup as the server to do all this. You have 2 options one is to make a linux server or the other would be to download a trial of windows server 2003 from microsoft.

Please see the links below for detailed instructions on how to set it all up.
You'll should be able to use your router and not have to buy a switch but you'll need to disable DHCP on the router. Don't disable DHCP until you're ready to start and make sure that you've assigned the server a static IP address.

Linux PXE boot server
PXE Boot server
or the link Xeno1 posted above

Microsoft RIS
PXE Booting Linux from Microsoft RIS - CDYNE Wiki for Web Services

Server 2003 Trial Download
Windows Server 2003 R2 with SP2: How to Get Trial Software and Standalone CDs

If you're not sure about anything please post back and we can assist you.

Hello, Do you still require assistance?

An update will be appriciated.

Regards,

Clever_Duck