Quoting Simon <greminn@gmail.com>:
Thanks for that... have downloaded the lastest snapshot and it booted no issues. Now it wont find the network card. sigh... its a intel e1000 i think. Is it easier to just put a new network card in it?
Could be,An old 3com or something may help, but I would guess that the kernel should support the e1000 nic. On a similar desktop machine, (intel board 965 chipset), I had the exact same problems as you. I eventually gave up and used a usb stick to install Debian.
A good how to is here: http://www.debian.org/releases/sarge/i386/ch04s04.html Mike