The Second attempt was much easier than the first

The very first thing I did was get myself a new bigger, faster hard disk (Hitachi 80GB, 5400RPM)

I installed Windows 2000 on a 10GB partition

I then decided to downgrade from unstable to testing as I was sick of all the things breaking when I did an apt-get upgrade.

The next step was to go to http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/ and download the i386 net-installer CD image (112MB). I actually downloaded the ISO via ftp from ftp://cdimage.debian.org/pub/cdimage-testing/sarge_d-i/i386/rc1/ using FileZilla my favourite windows ftp/scp client.

I then booted off my freshly burnt Debian Sarge, net-intaller CD.

The new Debian installer is great. It found all my hardware except Power Management, USB & Firewire, which will require a new Kernel plus it got X windows up and running ([Getting the mouse to work in X|minus the mouse]). It was very simple to use compared to my [First attempt (December-January|previous install attempts] and even to a Windows installer which (sadly) is what I'm use to. My only gripe with the installer is with the fact that you can't choose which desktop environments you install, you get all or nothing.

The installer even helps you with [Partitioning your hard disk|partitioning your hard disk] and writes fstab so you can have /boot, /home, /root etc, etc on different partitions.