I have reinstalled kernel 2.4.25.sarge-i386 several times over the past 3 days, and the problems that crop up are similar but not identical.

I install the Debian base-system using netinst, bootup first time and get the standard libraries, X11, fluxbox, emacs, web utilities. Everything works fine at the 2 bootup too.

The nightmare begins roughly 3rd bootup, modules namely sound, usb and ethernet are "not found". On 4th bootup everything might work fine again, but from there on its pure crap.

Module dependencies sometimes, might not be fulfilled, and the errors have "stablized" at this point, I get this when i restart /etc/init.d/networking :
" socket: Address family not supported by protocol - make sure CONFIG_PACKET (Packet socket) and CONFIG_FILTER (Socket Filtering are enabled in your kernel configuration.
Failed to bring up eth0."

I did not fiddle with the kernel, it is the precompiled version in the sarge distro....

I don't expect a full solution to this horrible problem, I am wondering whether this is a hardware problem, cos I ran the same box on the same Debian system for a month, before screwing things up after a kernel upgrade to 2.6.

Perhaps I should throw away this box. It's at least 5 years old.

Could be a hard drive that's failing. Or it could be that you didn't get the hard drive completely formatted before installation. You can always edit your configuration for your network after installation, even sound and usb. The only things that could keep you from getting debian working after installation is the mouse, keyboard or video card not getting installed correctly. If you can get x installed, then you can configure your other hardware after.

Does repartitioning the hard disk during the initial installation not count as reformatting? I have currently reinstalled again, the system is running through its initial apt-get upgrade, and the ethernet module is working (for the moment).

If I really require a total reformat, could you recommend me a suitable bootup tool to do so?

Thanks.

When you repartition, it does not reformat unless it's setup that way, usually when you do an installation of an OS, you will not only do a partitioning of drives but then you have to format those drives with a file system. Sometimes they will go together, sometimes it's two separate processes, one after the other. You will see when you do an installation whether it is also formatting the partition or not, it will say so when it does it.