Installation

Hi. I recently attempted to install m0n0wall on an old computer that I have.  I followed to installation instructions as best that I could. First I connected the hard drive I was using to my windows machine. I then tried to use physdiskwrite to write the image to the disk. When I first tried this I got a message stating that the drive was larger then 2GB. I used the -u flag to get past the message and everything seemed to work fine. However, when I put the drive into the old machine the drive's old contents were still there. Also, my windows machine did not boot initially but instead booted what I think is m0nowall. I managed to get my windows machine to boot by placing a windows cd in the cd drive(not booting from it, just placing it in there). However, when there is no windows cd in there the computer boots what i think is monowall (it shows some writing than the word dhcp and some dots). I know without a doubt that I selected the correct drive because I triple checked everything. Does anyone know what went wrong and how I can fix everything? Any help will be greatly appreciated.

I figured out that the boot loader on my windows drive got switched around. It's an easy fix but I'd still like to know how it happened and how I can prevent it in the future.

I wouldn't recommend using physdiskwrite for hard drives because it's too easy to overwrite your Windows install.

I always use:
http://chrisbuechler.com/index.php?id=17

the images on that iso are outdated, but it's a breeze to upgrade via the webGUI once you have it installed. (in fact that's easier than recreating that CD, which is why it's still so outdated.  )

thanks for the suggestion cmb  i'll be sure to try it out.