UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

houston ...
i have the 2 red hat 7.1 cds and want to install them on my old puter, getting rid of windows altogether.
i have deleted nearly everything off my hdd except the bare essentials.
now, i put in cd1, but it didn't boot up.
so i burnt the boot.img file to a cdr and that didn't boot either. so i assume my cd drive isnt bootable(?).
so i went to put it onto a floppy and windows says the file (boot.img) is 1.40Mb. i always thought that a floppy was 1.44Mb, but windows will only recognise all of them as 1.38Mb and says the file won't fit.
i have tried about 5 floppies, but none work (with 1.44Mb printed on them).
can a kind soul suggest a fix for my problem?
thanks in advance

There should be a readme on the 1st cd that explaines how to make a bootable floppy.

also check your bios to see if you turned on bootable cd-rom.

i havent played with redhat for quite some time.

ok, i am convinced that i have a rogue copy of win95 on this puter.
i have now tried cdr, cdrw, boot cdr, diskette created from explorer and now diskette created using 'rawrite -f \images\boot.img -d a:' in the dos prompt.
but f*%$*&#^*&#^ windows just starts on up.
i even tried changing the bios (though there is a chance i botched this up).
i don't know what else to do.

hip hip hooray!!!!!!!
52nd time lucky ... thanks for the help Optimus_P ... eventually got down to another tutorial which said to use autoboot and that worked (thank christ)!
i am off to play now.

good luck.