Michael, When posting an help request, I really think you should also provide more information. For instance, what are the error messages? What are they related to? What is the model of your laptop? Its memory? Hard disk size? Nevertheless, here are some quick answers: 1. Try another distribution than RedHat. For instance, Slackware or SuSE. If you have to stick to RedHat, you may as well stick to 7.2, as I don't think the problem you describe is distribution-related. For your information, I installed RedHat 7.2 without any problem on my IBM Thinkpad laptop -- but it's probably a much newer machine than yours. 2. On many laptops (not all), there is a special cable that allow you to connect your floppy drive to the parallel port. Do you have one of these? If that is the case, you can boot off the floppy and use the CDROM drive at the same time. 3. The error messages may be due to the fact that RedHat installation needs a second floppy to complete the boot process. Try to refer to the RedHat documentation for this. This second floppy, for instance, is necessary for Slackware. I think that Mandrake also requires this. 4. Check that your laptop BIOS can boot off the CDROM drive instead of booting from the floppy drive. That would solve all your problems. This is what I used for my laptop, and it's really the easiest way to do it. 5. Before installing anything, please check that your laptop is supported by searching for its brand and model on the following site: http://www.linux-laptop.net (Just doing this will probably save you a lot of time and effort). Please also check with Compaq Tech Support and ask them if RedHat is supported on that model. On the site I mentioned, you also have tons of advice to install Linux on just about every machine you can think of. 6. If all else fails, but you have network access once you have booted the RedHat floppy, try installing the entire RedHat distribution over the network. This, of course, requires you to have a second computer to create an FTP, or NFS, server. Not the easiest way to do it, but it works. Any machine will do, as long as it has a network and your laptop has a network card as well. That's about it. Hope this helps! -- Gil Andre gandre@arkeia.com Technical Writer Arkeia Corp. http://www.arkeia.com