A laptop installation challenge

[AG]

On a previous thread, I had polled some advice on the best way to 
install Debian on an old laptop that lacked a CD drive.  A number of 
suggestions were made and I eventually went with the idea of changing 
the pre-existing /boot/lilo.conf and adding a newly downloaded vmlinuz 
and init.gz Then I copied a netinst *.iso image onto a USB stick and booted.

All went well, and I was able to install a new Debian system.  However, 
when I went to reboot into the system I received the "EBDA is big; 
kernel setup stack overlaps LILO second stage" message.  Googling this 
message throws back a number of suggested solutions which break down 
into one of two choices - changing the lilo.conf file (difficult since I 
cannot get into the lilo.conf due to the system having been locked at 
boot up) and using a rescue CD (difficult because it has no CD drive to 
work with).  I cannot ssh into the laptop because it hasn't booted and 
so I am left with a laptop that cannot boot, cannot use a CD disk to 
boot and which is fundamentally useless.

Can anyone suggest a way that I can get this thing to boot given the 
significant constraints described or has this now been reduced to a hunk 
of plastic for use as a doorstop?

Thanks for any ideas.


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