Guest odindali Posted February 18, 2009 Report Share Posted February 18, 2009 Starting off, I am a complete newbie to these forums - I did try to search for an answer to this before posting but have not found one. I apologize if this question has already been asked and answered. After being somewhat fed up with windows security holes and general expense for seemingly no reason, after using OS X at work extensively, I grew somewhat fond of Unix based OSes.. I decided on Mandriva (I used that site which helps you choose what version is best for you..) It was among Mandriva, Open SUSE, and Ubuntu. I love how customizable Linux is, etc etc. It seems like something I will only come to appreciate more the more I know about it. However -- My CD/DVD drive broke (not completely, but enough to corrupt some [now most, heh..] files when reading/writing, etc..) So, I can boot into Mandrake [err.. Mandriva], and finally got it 'installed' however pretty much everything is corrupted I can't even edit computer settings, GRUB doesn't respond to my keyboard(although it did one of the times I tried to install it), all included program files are corrupt, etc etc.. (finally installed this way I think the 6th or 7th try ) Needless to say, the this [CD] method isn't going to work for me. I just moved into a new apt and don't have the internet there yet, so I cannot do the internet install. I am curious if I can install it through windows, or if there is another easy way to do it. (My hard drive is already partitioned and everything, and windows is on one partition). Any help would be greatly appreciated, and I apologize for how verbose this post was :P Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ianw1974 Posted February 18, 2009 Report Share Posted February 18, 2009 You could do it from a usb stick perhaps, providing of course you have one bigger than the CD or DVD image that you downloaded. Also, means your computer would have to have the ability to boot from usb devices. If so, then find a computer that you can get access to that has internet, and then download a program called 'unetbootin" it exists for Windows and Linux. Then, when you open it, click the ISO option and provide the Mandriva iso that you downloaded before and wrote to CD/DVD. It will then enable you to write to your usb stick, and then you can boot from this and hopefully it should allow you to install again. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest odindali Posted February 18, 2009 Report Share Posted February 18, 2009 Awesome! I'm still at work, and will download it right now! This will format my USB drive, so I should backup what's on there already, correct? Thank you very much for your help, and will post updates tomorrow! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ianw1974 Posted February 18, 2009 Report Share Posted February 18, 2009 No, you can just leave the partition intact with FAT32 on the usb stick, make sure it's empty if you like by deleting the files, and then just use unetbootin with providing the iso option. Don't select the distribution option, else it will try to download another iso before it will create the usb stick. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scarecrow Posted February 18, 2009 Report Share Posted February 18, 2009 First, get sure your computer BIOS supports booting from USB. Else, you cannot really do much... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
medo3891 Posted February 19, 2009 Report Share Posted February 19, 2009 See if anything here helps you: http://wiki.mandriva.com/en/Docs/Installin...or_the_Internet Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
yossarian Posted February 19, 2009 Report Share Posted February 19, 2009 download a program called 'unetbootin" it exists for Windows and Linux. See here: http://lubi.sourceforge.net/unetbootin.html Good luck! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest odindali Posted February 19, 2009 Report Share Posted February 19, 2009 Firstly, let me thank everyone so much for the overwhelming amount of answers and helpfulness. I tried the USB boot method last night, but my machine is about 4 years old (33,000+ hours of uptime) with an abit av8 motherboard, which apparently doesn't support booting from a flash drive. :sad: It has options of USB Floppy drive, and CDROM drive; I tried in vain to use the "USB CDROM drive" with my flash drive, thinking I could trick it since it had the contents of an ISO on it.. to no avail.. I didn't think that would work anyway, but it was worth a try. Maybe there is another way to go about this -- Is there any way to 'update' or 'repair' your installation of Mandriva with a USB Flash drive [no internet at home, and busted cdrom/dvd drive]? (all the packages seem to be missing, most programs don't work that are included with it, tons of errors on programs that do work, etc) Or maybe there is another way to go about installing? Again, thank everyone so much for all your help, and I'm sorry to be such a pain.. [support from you all is so much better than microsoft/mac could ever dream of!] Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest odindali Posted February 19, 2009 Report Share Posted February 19, 2009 (edited) See if anything here helps you: http://wiki.mandriva.com/en/Docs/Installin...or_the_Internet I looked over that page you sent - and installing from a hard disk with linux (or windows, but I finally got GRUB working - I needed to enable USB Keyboard and Mouse in DOS in my BIOS, however I didn't need to do that before... but it works now so I'm not going to argue..)looks promising... however, since I grew up with DOS and Windows, and am not really too familiar with unix/linux commands or filetypes, I'm unsure of exactly how to proceed (what files/commands to use, where to place files, etc..) I have the Mandriva One install. [edit: 64 bit edition] Editing the GRUB startup menu is one of the few things I can do in Mandriva... I can 'unzip' my ISO to a directory, or download new files here at work and throw them on a flash drive if need be. Edited February 19, 2009 by odindali Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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