Installation on ThinkPads without CD-ROM drive

Some ThinkPads (e.g. the whole X series) come without a CD-ROM drive by default. Even though there are options to buy a solution like the UltraBase, a full dock or simply an external CD-ROM drive1, this is not the cheapest option and might not always be neccessary. Also, with some external CD-ROMs the problem might arise that the ThinkPad is not able to boot from them. See our List of supported boot devices for various ThinkPads. So the question arises how to get your system of choice onto that precious piece of hardware. This page should tell you about the possible solutions. Since in most cases the installation base packages come on CD, you'll need a second computer, equipped with a CD-ROM drive, for all of those solutions. Many older ThinkPads came with only a floppy drive and cannot boot from any CD drive at all. For those machines, booting from floppy is the only option. Then one can install from CD, over a network, or from the hard drive.

Installation from USB drive

Note: Not all thinkpads have a BIOS that supports USB booting.

This is probably the most easy approach.

• Connect the USB drive² to the host and format it.
• Get a bootable system and all needed installation files onto the USB drive, i.e. by copying the complete filesystem from your installation CD-ROM to the USB drive. Of course if your USB drive is not big enough for that you'll have to make more sofisticated choices about what to copy and what to leave behind.
• Insert the USB drive into the USB port of your ThinkPad.
• Power on the ThinkPad an press F12 to get to the boot menu.
• Select the USB drive as boot media and boot.
• Follow the installation process.

Installation via network boot

Thinkpads support PXE to boot off another system that is connected via Ethernet. In this case the ThinkPad acts as a network boot client, the other system as server. The idea is to boot a system on the server that the ThinkPad can boot into then by loading all required data directly from that server.

For this to work you will have to either have both the server and the ThinkPad connected in the same subnet of your LAN, or have them connected directly via a crossed Ethernet cable.

using Knoppix on the server side

• Insert the Knoppix CD into the server and boot it up.
• Make sure to boot with the 2.6 kernel by giving the kernel26 boot option.
• Once your KDE desktop is loaded, look in the K-Menu hierarchy for the link to the terminal server setup.
• Launch the Terminal Server and make it use the appropriate network device.
• Power on your ThinkPad and press F12 to get to the boot menu.
• Select the ThinkPads network adapter as the boot media.
• The ThinkPad should now boot from the Knoppix Terminal Server directly.

Installation from the internal harddrive

The idea here is to have all required files allready on the internal harddrive when you power up your ThinkPad for installation, including of course a minimal system to boot up and start the installation process.

Convenient, but how do you get the files there?

• One option is to copy them via network boot (see above).
• Some Linux distributions offer ways to download the installation files from a FTP server and to choose this directory as installation source instead of a CD-ROM.
• A second way, if you already have a 'working' copy of DOS or MS Windows installed, is to start the installer from loadlin or GRUB. This is detailed here.
• Another one is to remove the harddrive from the ThinkPad and connect it to the other machine. Again, this can be achieved in several ways:
  • putting the harddrive into an UltraBay secondary HDD adapter of a second ThinkPad
  • putting the harddrive into an external casing and connect it to the second machine via USB, PCMCIA or whatever
  • connecting the harddrive via a 2.5" (laptop) to 3.5" (desktop) harddrive adapter

Follow one of the following instructions.

Installing Windows 2000 or XP

• Attach the harddrive to the host computer and install a minimal bootable DOS system i.e. by booting a Win98 Emergency Boot Disk and performing the command "SYS X:" (where X = the laptop's harddrive).
• Copy FDISK.EXE to the laptop harddrive.
• Return the harddrive to the laptop and boot to DOS. (If you have Win98 installed by default, you can skip the first two steps and simply reboot in Windows to DOS.)
• Run FDISK and set up your new Windows system partition on this laptop. (If you do not do this on the laptop, after reboot you will receive the infamous "NTLDR IS MISSING" error.)
• Then return the drive to the host and format the drive as FAT32. (DO NOT format as NTFS.)
• Repeat the "SYS X:" step to make the new partition bootable.
• Get SMARTDRV.EXE from the internet and copy it to your Thinkpads harddrive.
• Also, from the Win2K or WinXP CD, copy the I386 folder to the harddrive.
• Return the laptop's harddrive to the Thinkpad one final time and boot to DOS.
• Run SMARTDRV.EXE first, then change directories to I386 and run WINNT.EXE, this will allow the installation to begin.
• During installation, choose NOT to format the destination partition, since it contains the installation files. If you want that filesystem to be NTFS you can convert it after installation from within Windows.

Installation from Diskette

Installing from CD

Many distributions have software on CD that will make a boot floppy that will allow you to install from an unbootable CD drive.

Installing over a network

Some distributions have a set of diskettes that will allow you to boot a machine, enable a network device and start installation over a network. For example, Slackware supports installing via an NFS mount. An unofficial add-on adds an option to install over FTP.

Installing from floppy

Some distributions did allow for a complete installation from diskette. As the size of distributions and the number of required diskettes has grown, and the ubiquity of optical storage increased, support for floppy installation has diminished.

However, there are still some Linux distributions that fit on as few as one diskette - with very limited functionality, of co urse.

Installation from an ISO image

Some distributions offer a way of installing directly from the downloadable ISO image, residing on your harddisk. Examples are VectorLinux 5.1 and SUSE 10. The individual distributions installation manuals will guide you through the process.

External Sources

• Gentoo alternative installation method HOWTO

FOOTNOTES [Δ]

1. External CD-ROM drives typically are connected through USB or PCMCIA. Be aware that not all of these drives are capable of booting. USB connected drives are more likely to be bootable on a ThinkPad than PCMCIA connected ones.
2. USB drive here means any kind of USB connected bootable data storage device, including external harddisk drives, memory card readers or memory sticks.