For k3lt01:

Back again after 4 days of up & down fever (98.0 F to 103.0 F) and feeling like I had been hit by a truck! Did nothing but rest, not even peeking at my IT stuff!!! A drag! But today, looks like I'm back to normal.

Many thanks for your message and explanations. When I first saw the initial menu, the first 4 items were like unknowns consequently, I chose one that made a bit more sense to me -- but that was in fact actually installing Wheezy! Hhmmm...

I'll retry using the Live (686-pae [whatever those 3 letters mean, cough, cough, cough] ) and will return after having given Wheezy a spin as you suggest.

Thanks for your good cheer!
Khun Phet Puthorn (my Thai name)
aka Peter
in Thailand

Some of the processors on old machines don't support pae. pae is for support for more than 3Gigs memory, although you don't have to have more than 3Gigs.

For k3lt01 & Eddy1 & unSpawn:

Had a great time 'visiting' and checking things out in Wheezy. The Debian pae Live CD interface was different than Kubuntu and Linux Puppy and it took quite a while for it to be ready to get to work, but it did! I eventually I managed to find just about everything I was looking for. That's the good news! Now for the bad!

But here's where I ended up the following morning when I turned the Dell once more to do more 'visiting'. One completely blank monitor, despite the CD-drive light going on and off, but no signals were getting to the monitor. Powered down the Dell and checked the monitor by attaching it to a neighboring HP Small Form Factor PC and the monitor performed just the way it should on that PC. Returned it to the Dell, and booted up again but with the same symptom: one blank monitor!

I will have to take the Dell into the local computer shop to see if they can figure what's wrong before I can get back to actually installing Debian.

At this time, I think it only fair to say that the original problem has been solved thanks to your inventive and creative suggestions. We should probably mark this thread "SOLVED!"

When the local shop will get back to me is up in the air. Additionally, I have an American friend arriving in Thailand at the end of October who will be in need of some help to clear out his apartment in the South of Thailand (Phuket) and find himself new digs closer to Bangkok. Consequently, I will probably put off work on the Dell for a while, but would be happy to have your regular email addresses so that I can let you know when I'll have more time to get back to completing my little project with getting Linux up and running on my old equipment.

I hope I can meet up with you again via this forum should you be willing to share your experience with me for some future continuation of getting a Linux machine up and running as it should - especially one that does not have Internet access in the village where I live.

Finally, I feel most happy and grateful for all the support that I received from the individuals who took time to help out newbie Khun Phet here in Thailand. I'll still check into LinuxQuestions every now and then, but only to keep abreast of what's going on until my Phuket friend is all taken of safe and sound. Again, many, many thanks!

Don't take offence Khun Phet but members generally don't "share" their private email addresses because a question asked in LQ helps more than just the person asking it. Also I recommend you edit your post and remove your email address because you will attract spam bots by posting it in a public forum.

For k3lt01:

Have done as suggested. And I appreciate your concern.

Khun Phet