Soeren Kuklau <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > Hi, > > we've received a set of 16 new (equally set-up) laptops which have > more modern interfaces like USB 2 and FireWire; at the same time, they > no longer have a disk drive. > > I've tried to boot the unattended ISO image from their built-in CD > drive. I get to the disk image selection point without trouble; > after selecting one, it is loaded and the typical debug info is > shown. However, it doesn't reach beyond the "Loading boot sector" > point: a typical "Please insert a bootable disk" message from the > BIOS appears when trying to boot off the image.
Interestingly, I had exactly the same problem yesterday on an Inspiron 8500. Only I WAS booting from the network. > I figure this is because the laptop contains no disk drives (thus, > the BIOS probably contains no drivers for them either). However, I > can boot off the Windows 98 Second Edition CD (which I believe also > does floppy emulation) just fine, so is this possibly an ISOLINUX > bug which might be fixed by now? It is actually a memdisk issue, and it persists even in the latest prerelease (2.05-pre2); I checked. > If not, I can only get around it by booting off the network, right? > :-/ Unfortunately, the network boots also use memdisk :-(. I got around this by removing the DVD-ROM from the laptop's bay and putting in a floppy drive instead. Then I was able to boot from the network just fine. My guess is the same as yours: That the BIOS does not enable its floppy support unless it notices that a floppy drive is actually present. This is more an issue for the SYSLINUX mailing list, and I will probably bring it up there. But meanwhile... Do you have a floppy drive which you can insert temporarily? If not, do you have a USB floppy drive which you can connect? (If you try this, be sure to flash your BIOS to the latest release first. I do not know whether this will work.) Solving this long-term may require more drastic measures. memdisk can emulate a hard drive instead of a floppy, and I suspect that would work here. The only problem is that it will take up a drive letter (presumably C:), meaning that the hard drive will be disk 2 (D:). This will require changes to autoexec.bat, the way we invoke fdisk, and probably a few other things. It is starting to look like it will be necessary, however. I will try to find time to whip something together this weekend, but my plate is already pretty full so I cannot make any promises. - Pat ------------------------------------------------------- This SF.Net email sponsored by: Free pre-built ASP.NET sites including Data Reports, E-commerce, Portals, and Forums are available now. Download today and enter to win an XBOX or Visual Studio .NET. http://aspnet.click-url.com/go/psa00100006ave/direct;at.asp_061203_01/01 _______________________________________________ unattended-info mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/unattended-info
