jack kinnon wrote:
Thanks for the answer on upgrading.Now I want to do an Internet-based installation of a 'compact' flavor. This, I understand, avoids the use of a stack of floppies. It requires loading some initial files to the hard-disk, execute the correct files and then download more files from the Net. Folllowing instructions from the Debian sites, I had downloaded root.bin, install.bat, linux.bin, drivers.tgz, loadlin.exe. I edited install.bat so that the files referred in there has the right directory path. When I executed install.bat, in the 'cmd' window of XP, there was "Invalid keyboard code specified" in the beginning, followed by lines about CPU mode and ending with a line that reads "WARNING: Not enough free memory (load buffer size)." My PC has 256MB. Can someone tell me what's wrong?------------------------------------------------------------------------
You can't do a hard disk install from WinXP; you need a version of Windows prior to WinME (and maybe Win98). (Well, you might could do it from WinXP's Recovery Console that you can get to by booting off the WinXP installation CD; never tried it.)
Alternatively, you can create a smallish FAT32 partition (10MB) and put the installer files there, then boot from a DOS/Win9x floppy and then start the Linux install from that FAT32 partition.
But the easiest way to do this is to download the Debian netinstall .ISO and burn it to CD, then boot off the CD to start the installation. This is a minimal CD (kind of like the minimal boot-from-hard-disk method you're trying to do) that then allows you to pull down the bulk of the system from the internet.
If you have a bootable flash-drive (aka keychain drive, jump drive, thumb drive), you can put the hard drive installation files there and try that. It should work, though I've never done it.
-- Kent