I've installed debian and when I reboot the system hangs at
sda:write protect is off
SCSI device sda: drive cache:write back
sda:sda1 sda2 <sda5>
sd 0:0:0:0: Attached scsi disk data

after awhile it continues and hangs again at hda_codec: Unknown model for ALC882, trying auto-probe from BIOS

and then again at
Detecting hardware...


I gave up after more than 15-20minutes of waiting.

Could it be that the burnt cd was corrupted? the md5sum on the cd i downloaded was correct; the first cd i burnt had corrupted packages on it and I couldn't finish the base install.

first install was corrupted, burnt another cd and this time everything went fine until the reboot

i used cd 1 without the network install
should i reinstall again and see? which cd should i use this time?

btw, how does one configure the network on debian using configuration files, i.e. where does one look for the config files to edit in order to set up the network?

Debian installation CDs have have a file listing the MD5 of each file on the disk. You can either check these by mounting the CD under another running system, or, when you boot the first CD, it will give you the option to check MD5s. I always make a point of doing so in case there was an error burning the CD.