Right I can get Debian to install up to the point of letting me select the partition information. It lets me set up two partitions one bootable and the other a swap partition of 500MB on a 20 gb disk.

It will NOT let me initalize the swap and it wont let me make a file system on the main partition it just hangs or comes back saying it could not initalize it. Is there any settings on the bios or hard drive i need to change? the disk worked fine with win xp

Just set the partiton as swap and you don't have to do anything else. Debian will do everything else for you...

y2k

If I set Debian to format the linux partition it get to inode 56 and stops dead. The swap partition is fine.

My partition is as follows

8MB Boot LINUX Primary
500MB SWAP
19492 LINUX primary

(Can someone suguest a partition plan for a 10GB hard drive only running LINUX with maybe a small area to allow a networked windows machine to see the files if mounted as a windows virtual drive say 1GB)

If I forget about formating the 19492 partition and go to install I get as far as installing the base files and then get

file:/instmnt/pool/main/u/util-linux/bsdutils_2.11n-7_i386.deb was corrupt

Couldnt download bsdutils

The iso was downloaded from Debian.org and burnt with Alcohol 120% (can someone verift the settings needed in this app please.)