Has anyone tried this trick?

[Lei Z]

Thanks for all the inputs. I have contacted HP technical support by email.
They suggested that the BIOS information should be updated to reflect the
new hard disk parameter, which could have changed, through a sequence of
function keys after cold boot. I will try it, and also PXE boot, when I
find time.

As I can always set up a primary DOS partition (FAT32 with DOS only) on
desktop and boot up the notebook with it with no problem (weird ?), I have
put a copy of zipslack on it, created e2fs on /dev/hda5 with it from the
notebook, and moved the linux to the extended partition. X is running fine
as expected and I boot into linux using loadlin now.

So the trick could be that I need to clear up the partition table first,
run fdisk, and create the file systems all on the notebook, using the BIOS
parameters. BSD's might have a better chance than other OS's to get around
this as it relies less on the BIOS disk setting.

Thanks again to the folks who have given their input.

Lei