[Solved] Installing on a system that does not boot from cdrom or usb

I have a very old and stuborn gateway solo 5300 laptop that refuses to boot form the disk I burned for arch linux, as well it refuses to boot from the usb disk I made with dd acording to Usb Flash Installation Media on the wiki
I also tryed UNetbootin: Install Arch Linux Without a CD From FTP.
It currently boots to windows xp, has two partitions and I wish to overwrite the entire hardrive. Do you have any sugestions?
Last edited by meschael (2014-06-27 02:03:56)

ewaller wrote:... Even a fully loaded machine (512MB) would be of little (if any) use
Really? I have a netbook with a total of 1G, and I never get anywhere close to using even half of that. Certainly this depends on the programs used - but for terminal only, 512MB would be more than enough IMHO. On my 1GB, I boot into X with a simple WM, and can use lightweight (but fully functional graphical) web browsers like luakit and dwb without getting anywhere near half RAM use.
If it is just 128MB, I agree that may be more of a problem. I wonder if Slitaz is still going - that was my favorite "micro" distro, but I have not kept track of the development in some time.
As for the main problem of the thread, I've reread your OP a couple of times, but I'm not sure I'm fully clear on your steps. First, unetbootin is expected to not work for arch. Have you made an iso using `dd`? Can you boot other live cds or usbs on the machine? In other words, is it a limitation of your hardware, or have the isos you've tried for arch just not worked yet?
Last edited by Trilby (2014-06-22 23:41:36)

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