I had roughly the same problem with my thinkpad i1200. Here's the work-around I used. First, I set the bios to boot from the CDROM. Then, I booted the recovery CD that came with the thinkpad, and escaped to a DOS prompt using one of the F-keys. From the DOS prompt, I ran the batch program boot.bat under /install on the Debian CD, which boots linux and fires you into a normal install. Any method that will get you a DOS prompt and a working CD drive ought to do the trick.
I've heard a couple of theories as to why the Debian CD's won't boot on some laptops. The one that seems to fit goes something like this: laptop bios's and laptop CDROMs can only boot a 1.4 MB or smaller boot image, and the boot image on the Debian CD is larger than this. But I don't know if this is true. Good luck. On Wed, Sep 26, 2001 at 07:15:54PM -0700, Erik Ryberg wrote: > Hello, > > The root.bin and rescue.bin images provided on my Debian 2.2 disks will > not boot my Dell Inspiron 2500; I cannot install Debian with these > disks. I have used dd to move the images onto a floppy with the same > result. (I am running Debian 2.2 on my desktop machine.) The computer > hangs during the initial boot. > > Does anyone have or know where I can get boot images that will work with > this machine? Or have another suggestion? It seems this problem surely > has been encountered before but my efforts searching the debian.org > support database and google searches have not been successful. I would > thus be grateful for any help. > > Erik Ryberg > -- Mark R. Barnes, AICP beautiful, sunny, downtown Astoria, OR 97103 email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] using: Mutt v 1.2.5i on Linux 2.2.19 -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
