Installing Ubuntu without cd-drive or USB boot support?

[Veron_]

Hi all.

I haven't been able to find any help for my problem. I have a old laptop with broken cd-drive and no USB boot support (it has floppy drive though).

It has Win XP installed on it and I want to format the whole drive and install Ubunut on it.

Any suggestions?

And since I'm fairly new to linux, all help is welcomed.

Thanks in advantage!

[Appiah]

Do you have a local network with other computers?
You could pxe boot and do a network install.

[stlsaint]

See here (http://www.ubuntugeek.com/install-ubuntukubuntuedubuntuxubuntu-without-cdrom-drive.html)! is this what you are trying to do...if not please post back.

[Veron_]

See here (http://www.ubuntugeek.com/install-ubuntukubuntuedubuntuxubuntu-without-cdrom-drive.html)! is this what you are trying to do...if not please post back.
The second method on your link worked almost like a charm, thanks for that!

But when ubuntu installer fires up and tries to find network card, it fails.
Could this be caused if I selected wrong NIC at ROM-a-matic?

edit. My NIC is Realtek RTL-8139, if that helps...

[Veron_]

I haven't been able to figure out why the installer doesn't find my network card, even though booting from network works.

My friend has a cable which I can use to connect the laptop 2,5" hard drive to my desktop computer with XP (and workig cd-rom :)). Then I could install Ubuntu on the laptop hard drive using my desktop computer.

Is Ubuntu going to work correctly when I use the 2,5" hard drive on my laptop?