Hi AceNot sure if this is the best list for your question, you might find the debian user list more responsive although it is a very high volume list.
If you have not read the documentation at http://www.debian.org/releases/stable/i386/install it would be worth looking at as that will give you a more detailed run through of the installation process. Debian installation is bit more challenging than the install of some of the other Linux distributions and depending on you level of experience you might find something like Mandrake linux at lot easier for a first install.
For your current problems MSDOS is not the issue when it comes to detecting a cdrom drive during the boot process rather it is the computer bios that deals with this. I have had problems in the past with older computers failing to detect bootable cd images that I have burnt after downloading from the net. There could also be a problem with the actually image. Have you tried to boot it on any other computers?
I am not to sure about your problem with the boot floppies as I have never used install.bat rather I just boot of the first floppy and then follow the instructions, so in that case windows is not an issue. Are you trying to install from within windows?
The other option is a network install but that is not worth doing unless you have a fast internet connection.
One other thing that you might be interested in is the knoppix distribution. It is a debian based system that comes on cdrom and runs off the cdrom so you get to use linux without having to worry about installing it. It also offers a very easy install option although it will need more than 1.2 GB of space. You can get it from www.knopper.net/knoppix/index-en.html and there is a lot of information about it at www.knoppix.net.,
Good luck John Ace wrote:
Hey y'all... I need some help installing Debian... I managed to write the image file to a disk using fireburner... but MSDOS doesm't detect it... How do I install it? I also tried the floppy-boot disks but install.bat didn't work correctly. It said something about not having the proper "keys" (-2,[d:\], etc.). Can anyone help me? I'm running Windows 98 on a MSDOS based Pentium II with a 4GB hard drive. The 1.2GB partion, previously the windows "D:\" drive has been reformated for Linux using Ranish Disk Partioner. Any help would be muchapprieciated. Thanks.Jason Herbert __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo. http://search.yahoo.com