Hi, it appears that this problem has resolved itself as I have recently booted from a 'debian-40r1-i386-kde-CD-1' and installed successfully. many thanks to anyone who has been looking into this - if you have any possible reasons why the 'hang' occured for future possible work arounds, then that would of course be gratefully received regards, Rob Hackett email: r.j.hackett@bham.ac.uk