Can't get past "Choose your language"

I'm installing the full set on an older Thinkpad (390E) and after choosing the language I get sent back to the same "choose your language" screen. There's no error message of any kind. Anybody know what might be going on?   Thanks.

x window / starting the desktop

  Needless to say I'm very new to this. I tried starting the x window (although I don't have a very clear idea what it is exactly) with the "startx' command, also I tried 'start kde'. I got a command not found to both. Then, to make sure my x configuration is right, I did 'dpkg-reconfigure x