Newbie cd installation problems

[Paul Walton]

I`ve been a Windows user up to now so please excuse my ignorance. I`m trying to install Debian 2.1 from the "Official" Binary- i386 CD. My computer, a 486 with 2 hard drives, a floppy and a CD drive wouldn`t boot CDs so I started the the installation from DOS, fine. Things went well until I got to the stage "Install Operating System Kernel and Modules" Seems whichever device I select for the CDROM returns the message "The CD-ROM was not mounted successfully"    I`ve looked at the ttty3 terminal and hda and hdb give the message "mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/cdrom, or too many mounted file systems" hdc and hdd give the message "mount: the kernel does not recognize /dev/cdrom as a block device (`maybe insmod driver`?) The SCSI option just brings up the "No SCSI Adapter" screen. All other options give the message "mount: special  device /dev/cdrom does not exist"   To make matters worse this is a spare PC bought cheaply so I have no real idea of any of the hardware specifications, and no Windows OS to check them on. I really would like to escape from Microsoft so any help would be much appreciated.     Paul Walton