On Mon, 16 Jul 2007 22:27:35 -0400, edju wrote:

> The laptop here will not read a cd-r, so neither will it boot off one.
> Thus, I cannot boot from a qtparted cd. As everyone knows, partitioning a
> mounted drive is a no-no, and I can't unmount the root directory. I can
> connect the lap to a network. Is it possible to put the cd in a "server"
> machine, and boot the lap off of it? I've looked in Google, but I'm
> getting crosseyed. I just want to know if the above, or something like it
> is possible; if so, I'll get further crosseyed. If there's some other way
> to handle this, I'm all ears.

It might get you better answers if you mentioned what laptop.

Is this a very old laptop, if it is Debian Etch may run very slowly on it,
even with enough memory. I have an old one, 500MHz K6 with 160MB that
runs well but slow, it's from 1999 yet it still is able to read a properly
burned CDR. If you burned the CD on a Windows machine, is it in a format
that can be read? I don't mean to insult you, but you didn't make the
common mistake of just burning the downloaded ISO to a CD, which will not
be bootable, did you? Does the laptop have a floppy it can boot from, in
that case smart boot manager on a floppy would allow you to boot from the
CD?

Tell us the make and model of your laptop, someone may even have one and
already know the answer you seek.

Rodney