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I put the current Kali-Linux live-build on a fresh 32 GB USB drive containing a single partition spanning the entire drive by downloading and verifying the ISO then using Win32 Disk Imager to create a bootable image, only to find it won't boot on the ancient Dell D600 I want to run WireShark captures on because the D600 doesn't support PAE.

I found a guide for creating a custom Kali live-build without PAE, then booted the PAE image on my desktop, where I tried to build a custom non-PAE image. This build failed with a "No space left on device" error. I found Win32 Disk Imager had replaced my big 32 GB partition with two smaller ones, one 3 GB long and the other (primary) partition 704 KB long. The rest of the drive is empty. I tried using Partition Master Pro to resize the 3 GB partition but it appears to be befuddled by the ex4 file system.

Is there any way to force the live-build to take place on a different storage device, or will I have to install Kali on my hard drive in order to build successfully? Other options are welcome (but don't suggest that I buy a new laptop - that's not in the budget).

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I researched this over the weekend and learned that my D600's Intel Pentium M CPU actually DOES support pae, though its CPUID does not have the pae bit set. Armed with this information, I booted the D600 with the current pae Live-USB build, selected Install and hit TAB instead of ENTER to display the boot command line, and added " forcepae -- forcepae" (just as I typed it here, without the "s) before hitting Enter to start the install.

Since my 40GB hard drive was already filled with Windows XP and data I wanted to keep, I installed into the empty space on my 32 GB Sandisk USB drive. There was 28.24GB available because it also contained the Live image that I booted to in order to run the install.

I let the installer find the largest contiguous unallocated space (or words to that effect) and decide how to allocate it between the installation and swap partitions. I let the installer install Grub on my hard drive so I can select Kali or WinXP at boot time (in theory... I was out of the room when the install finished and the D600 rebooted, and I returned to find the Kali login screen on it).

After testing a bit, the only flies in the ointment are that:

  1. Grub doesn't offer me the choice of booting the Windows XP on the system hard drive as promised during installation, and

  2. Kali is slower than molasses in winter. I'm guessing I need to update the display driver for the ATI Radeon 9000 Mobility device. It does, however, capture network traffic with Wireshark and that's what I wanted it for.

On the bright side, the wireless device worked with the stock install with no additional drivers.

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