Hi! I have a compaq LTE laptop, I can't remember the number off hand and I am wanting to install Linux on it. The problem is, for some reason my support worker at Dewsbury College needed to go to the boot prompt or the DOS prompt but despite pressing the function key F8 to try and stop it going into windows, and instead going into the setup, it seems to ignore the command and when we tried f10, the system just crashed and it wouldn't let me even switch off the laptop so I had to leave it running in the case until the battery ran flat and when it started making a crackling noise which it does when the battery is flat, I had to remove the battery before it stopped altogether so now it will boot as normal. Could anyone possibly give me some advice as to how we can get to the DOS prompt? Carlos my PA or support worker at Dewsbury was trying to re-partition my hard drive on my laptop and was trying to use Fips, the DOS tool for repartitioning. He tried shutting the machine down from the start window and chose the restart in MSDOS mode but apparently this is just the DOS window and not the command prompt for standard DOS. Short of buying a new laptop which I am tempted to do as we were getting so frustrated with trying to repartition the drive for Linux, could someone give me any other advice which doesn't mean me spending another 1000 pounds on a new laptop? I haven't had this laptop very long, I bought it fairly cheaply at a computer fair. The laptop was just under 500 pounds, I bought a MODEM and case with it and it comes with a CDROM drive. It runs windows 98 so I am hoping it will support Linux. Carlos burned me Redhat 7.2 and Emacspeak onto 3 CDs. I gave him 3 blank CDs, two for the operating system and the third one he used for Emacspeak and the other applications needed to go with it like Viavoice which only took about 5 meg for Emacspeak and the other applications.