I have windows 98 installed on my IBM think pad. I want to install suse linux. unfortunatly i cannot get it to boot up from the cd rom. if i get into the dos prompt from windows can i install it from there? if so what do i type to start the installation. it is Suse 8.1 professional. thanx J

If your computer doesn't support booting from cdrom, then you can make a boot floppy. Check the documentation on the cd on how to do this. It usually involves using the rawrite program to write the image of a floppy to a disk.

1. is your bios set to boot off cdrom if not you need to change that so it will (or use a boot floppy like mentioned by 987) 2. if your bios is configured to boot from cdrom did you burn the cdom from a image or copy files over or buy it?? if you simply did a copy of directories it wont work there is a hidden piece that makes the cdrom bootable that wont be copied by simply dragging folders over you need to clone a cd in that case getting back to #1 if you are unfamilliar with your bios or configuring it here goes (messing with the bios or cmos is dangerous to your system so be careful and only make the needed changes no others ) depending on the make and model of your computer at boot time just as you hit the power button (and before the beep of the system speaker ) hit f1 f2 del one of theese keys will take you to your bios configuration under the boot tab it will read something like this hard drive removable device cdrom network etc..... make sure cdrom is first in the list followed by floppy and then hard drive this way the system checks for them first then proceeds to boot if no bootable media is found in either of those save your changes and restart now your system should be capable of booting off cdrom