Quote Originally Posted by ABC123
I have an old Gateway 2000 (from 1995) that I want to get some files off but windows is not working. I tried getting windows to work by using the special boot disk(floppy) but then it asked for the Gateway 2000 CD which I can't find.

I heard that with just a Knoppix CD I could get it running to where I could move the desired files to a floppy. So I downloaded Knoppix and burnt it to a CD.

If the Knoppix CD is in while it is trying to load I get this message

ISOLINUX 2.04 (Debian 2003-06-06) isolinux loading spec packet failed, trying to wing it...

isolinux: failed to locate CD-Rom device; boot failed

So then I tried starting the computer with the special boot disk and then using the Knoppix CD in place of the Gateway 2000 CD. Things seemed to be progressing as it looked like it was installing/loading Knoppix; but then it asked if I wanted to load the drivers, I answered yes, it replied drivers all ready loaded do you want to overwrite them. I'm not that computer technical so I wasn't sure if this would damage the files I'm after (not to mention there was an approaching thunderstorm) so I turned it off.

Can I overwrite the drivers without damaging the files I'm after?

Is what I was doing the right way to get the computer working?

Any idea why I get that error message?

Thanks in advance
I have a Gateway 2000 computer from 1994 and can make a good guess why you cannot boot.

You CDROM drive is probably NOT a standard IDE/ATAPI drive. If it is like my PC, it is probably plugged into some custom CD controller that is part of your sound card and not part of the motherboard disk controller.

KNOPPIX does not load the driver for this controller and even if it did, the KNOPPIX initial ramdisk does not search for the CD-R disk inside that part of the device tree.

Your best bet is to get some sort of floppy-disk based rescue system such as Tom's Root Boot disk or better yet an MSDOS or a FREEDOS boot disk.