> Well, you can use mkbootdisk to make a floppy that will kick-off the > boot process, and then do the rest of the job from the USB drive, but > I think other than that you're out of luck. > > Actually, I think you could install one of the Linux bootloaders on > the laptop's hard drive, and have that either load windows or load > linux from the USB device. The problem is bootloaders use the BIOS to retrive the kernel. So the bootloader still isn't going to be able to boot the USB drive. The solution is to boot the kernel off floppy or the primary HD (you CAN boot the kernel off a FAT filesystem...) and use the USB drive for the root partition.