Install Mint without a CDROM

Questions about Grub, UEFI,the liveCD and the installer
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thedeerhunter270
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Install Mint without a CDROM

Post by thedeerhunter270 »

Hi,

I need a bit of help.

I have an old laptop with a broken CDROM (no floppy drive).

I want to install Mint on it said laptop. But I'm not sure how I'm going to achieve it.

At the moment I have XP on the HD, which was installed by putting the HD into another laptop with a working CDROM, and coping the i386 folder and installing from there.

I also have an external CDROM, which the old laptop wont boot from - although it will boot a USB Pen Drive oddly enough.

Cheers for any thoughts.
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clem
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Post by clem »

how big is your USB Pen Drive ? I suppose you could transfer the content of the CDROM to the USB Pen drive and take it from there.

Clem
thedeerhunter270
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Post by thedeerhunter270 »

clem wrote:how big is your USB Pen Drive ? I suppose you could transfer the content of the CDROM to the USB Pen drive and take it from there.

Clem
I have 3, but for some reason the only one that will boot is the smallest one which is only 128Mb. The other ones are 256 and 512.

At the moment I have DSL on the 128 - I can boot (as I just tried it) into that ok.

I was thinking on the lines of - how I could access my USB CDROM in DSL, setup the HD and transfer something that way, but I'm kinda out of my dept.
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clem
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Post by clem »

You could create an internal partition... copy the content of the CD in that partition, setup grub to boot this partition (do all that from DSL) and install from there... but to be honest it's really starting to get crazy. I suggest plugging the HDD in another laptop.

Clem
thedeerhunter270
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Post by thedeerhunter270 »

clem wrote: I suggest plugging the HDD in another laptop.
Yep, I tend to agree. I'll do that I think, I'll use a surrogate laptop.

But - should I boot off the live CD and copy the contents to the HD? And if I do - how to I run the install?

Or, should I just install from the surrogate?
thedeerhunter270
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Re: No CDROM

Post by thedeerhunter270 »

Thanks for your thoughts Edward.

Nah I can't boot a CDROM unfortunately, only with the HDD in a surrogate laptop.

Not sure I can get the laptop on network once I've vapped XP.

I kinda have a chicken and egg problem.

I think I'll have to try installing Mint to the HDD from the surrogate laptop, then fit the HDD back in the original - and hope that works.

I do have a 3.5 to 2.5 IDE cable that I could use to plug my laptop HDD into my desktop. But, I'm not sure how that would help - yet.
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Re: USB

Post by thedeerhunter270 »

Hiko96786 wrote:Found this on installing from a pendrive
Thanks Edward, I appreciate the links - I'll have a longer look when I get home from work tomorrow.
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Post by thedeerhunter270 »

Bunny wrote:Here's one that doesn't need a flash drive big enough for the iso (I'm assuming you could just use a flash drive instead of a floppy disk):
Yeah I think you're right - the only issues I've had, albeit trying to boot MS DOS, is loading USB CDROM drivers, without a conflict to the USB Pen.

I'm in my lunch break, but I'll have a look when I get home later.

Although, what am I saying, I am home - I get nearly always come home for lunch! :)
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