Installing from WinXP (nocd, nousb) [Solved]

[Gadfly]

Hello everyone,

I am attempting to install Sabayon 4.2 Gnome on my little Dell Laptop (Inspiron 8200), without using a CD/DVD (the drive on the laptop is faulty), or using a USB device (no boot options for USB on this series).

So! I have gone the path of this nice and simple guide posted here -> (Howto Install any Distro from WinXP)
http://www.instantfundas.com/2007/08/install-any-linux-distro-directly-from.html

I get grub running, no problem, all files setup correctly in WinXP, no problem. I have my partition resized with a big chunk of space available. I reboot and the sabayon installer seems to begin initialization until it stops at this error:

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>> Activating mdev
>> Determining root device...
!! Could not find the root device in .
Please specify another value or: press Enter for the same, type "shell" for a shell, or "q" to skip...
root block device() :: _


I have tried entering several things based upon my readings of this and other forums, mostly different device identifiers such as /dev/hda, /dev/hda1-9, /dev/sda, /dev/sda1-9, etc.

The only one that gives any different response is /dev/sda which returns:

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>> Mounting root...
mount: mounting /dev/sda on /newroot failed: Input/output error
!! Could not mount specified ROOT, try again.


I have seen many other people on this forum with a similar problem, however it is always after the system is installed, please note that I am attempting to install fresh at the moment with nothing setup. I can of course drop to shell without problems, but trying to bring up data from the shell has left me unsuccessful, fdisk and the like simply give me command not found errors.

I am very new to all of this, so please be gentle. And of course if there is another method of installing without CD or USB please be willing to share if possible.

Thank you everyone in advance for any help you can share on this matter.

[Gadfly]

I have just discovered that unetbootin also allows HDD based installs (I was under the impression it was USB only). I am attempting doing such while continuing to search for more information regarding this problem.

[Gadfly]

Unetbootin has resulted in the same exact error (though a different looking terminal, this one graphical). It attempts to mount /dev/sr0, sda1, sda2, sda3 and reports 'Media not found'. It then returns the same root device error as posted above.

Any advice?

[Gadfly]

Cheat Codes attempted unsuccessfully:

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pci=nomsi
pci=noacpi
acpi=off pci=nomsi
gentoo=nohdparm nohdparm ide=nodma
noapic nolapic
legacy


[Gadfly]

After so many unsuccessful attempts, I went back and gave my flaky DVD drive another chance. After several runs with it dumping the install to errors and kernel panics, I finally noticed a line saying something about dell.wireless as it flew scrolling past my view and decided to remove the PCMCIA Linksys Wireless Network Adapter from the system before my next attempt.

Apparently that was the issue with installing from the CD/DVD. For whatever reason, having the Wireless Adapter in caused the system to randomly fault out of the installation at random points of the process and dump the system to a panic log and hard lock.

The install has now completed successfully, I will close this topic and note it as solved.. somewhat I guess.