&boot-installer-intro-cd.xml; To start the installer from Windows, you must first obtain CD-ROM/DVD-ROM or USB memory stick installation media as described in and . If you use an installation CD or DVD, a pre-installation program should be launched automatically when you insert the disc. In case Windows does not start it automatically, or if you are using a USB memory stick, you can run it manually by accessing the device and executing setup.exe. After the program has been started, a few preliminary questions will be asked and the system will be prepared to start the &debian-gnu; installer. To boot the installer from hard disk, you must first download and place the needed files as described in . If you intend to use the hard drive only for booting and then download everything over the network, you should download the netboot/debian-installer/&architecture;/initrd.gz file and its corresponding kernel netboot/debian-installer/&architecture;/linux. This will allow you to repartition the hard disk from which you boot the installer, although you should do so with care. Alternatively, if you intend to keep an existing partition on the hard drive unchanged during the install, you can download the hd-media/initrd.gz file and its kernel, as well as copy a CD (or DVD) iso to the drive (make sure the file is named ending in .iso). The installer can then boot from the drive and install from the CD/DVD image, without needing the network. For LILO, you will need to configure two essential things in /etc/lilo.conf: to load the initrd.gz installer at boot time; have the vmlinuz kernel use a RAM disk as its root partition. Here is a /etc/lilo.conf example: image=/boot/newinstall/vmlinuz label=newinstall initrd=/boot/newinstall/initrd.gz For more details, refer to the initrd 4 and lilo.conf 5 man pages. Now run lilo and reboot. The procedure for GRUB is quite similar. Locate your menu.lst in the /boot/grub/ directory (or sometimes /boot/boot/grub/) and add an entry for the installer, for example (assuming /boot is on the first partition of the first disk in the system): title New Install root (hd0,0) kernel /boot/newinstall/vmlinuz initrd /boot/newinstall/initrd.gz From here on, there should be no difference between GRUB or LILO. Let's assume you have prepared everything from and . Now just plug your USB stick into some free USB connector and reboot the computer. The system should boot up, and you should be presented with the boot: prompt. Here you can enter optional boot arguments, or just hit &enterkey;. You will have already downloaded the floppy images you needed and created floppies from the images in . To boot from the installer boot floppy, place it in the primary floppy drive, shut down the system as you normally would, then turn it back on. For installing from an LS-120 drive (ATAPI version) with a set of floppies, you need to specify the virtual location for the floppy device. This is done with the root= boot argument, giving the device that the ide-floppy driver maps the device to. For example, if your LS-120 drive is connected as the first IDE device (master) on the second cable, you enter install root=/dev/hdc at the boot prompt. Note that on some machines, Control Alt Delete does not properly reset the machine, so a hard reboot is recommended. If you are installing from an existing operating system (e.g., from a DOS box) you don't have a choice. Otherwise, please do a hard reboot when booting. The floppy disk will be accessed, and you should then see a screen that introduces the boot floppy and ends with the boot: prompt. Once you press &enterkey;, you should see the message Loading..., followed by Uncompressing Linux..., and then a screenfull or so of information about the hardware in your system. More information on this phase of the boot process can be found below in . After booting from the boot floppy, the root floppy is requested. Insert the root floppy and press &enterkey;, and the contents are loaded into memory. The installer program debian-installer is automatically launched. &boot-installer-intro-net.xml; There are various ways to do a TFTP boot on i386. It could be that your Network Interface Card or Motherboard provides PXE boot functionality. This is a Intel re-implementation of TFTP boot. If so, you may be able to configure your BIOS to boot from the network. It could be that your Network Interface Card provides TFTP boot functionality. Let us (&email-debian-boot-list;) know how did you manage it. Please refer to this document. The etherboot project provides bootdiskettes and even bootroms that do a TFTPboot. When the installer boots, you should be presented with a friendly graphical screen showing the Debian logo and a menu: Installer boot menu Install Graphical install Advanced options > Help Press ENTER to boot or TAB to edit a menu entry Depending on the installation method you are using, the Graphical install option may not be available. For a normal installation, select either the Install or the Graphical install entry — using either the arrow keys on your keyboard or by typing the first (highlighted) letter — and press &enterkey; to boot the installer. The Advanced options entry gives access to a second menu that allows to boot the installer in expert mode, in rescue mode and for automated installs. If you wish or need to add any boot parameters for either the installer or the kernel, press &tabkey;. This will display the default boot command for the selected menu entry and allow to add additional options. The help screens (see below) list some common possible options. Press &enterkey; to boot the installer with your options; pressing &escapekey; will return you to the boot menu and undo any changes you made. Choosing the Help entry will result in the first help screen being displayed which gives an overview of all available help screens. Note that it is not possible to return to the boot menu after the help screens have been displayed. However, the F3 and F4 help screens list commands that are equivalent to the boot methods listed in the menu. All help screens have a boot prompt at which the boot command can be typed: Press F1 for the help index, or ENTER to boot: At this boot prompt you can either just press &enterkey; to boot the installer with default options or enter a specific boot command and, optionally, boot parameters. A number of boot parameters which might be useful can be found on the various help screens. If you do add any parameters to the boot command line, be sure to first type the boot method (the default is install) and a space before the first parameter (e.g., install fb=false). The keyboard is assumed to have a default American English layout at this point. This means that if your keyboard has a different (language-specific) layout, the characters that appear on the screen may be different from what you'd expect when you type parameters. Wikipedia has a schema of the US keyboard layout which can be used as a reference to find the correct keys to use. If you are using a system that has the BIOS configured to use serial console, you may not be able to see the initial graphical splash screen upon booting the installer; you may even not see the boot menu. The same can happen if you are installing the system via a remote management device that provides a text interface to the VGA console. Examples of these devices include the text console of Compaq's integrated Lights Out (iLO) and HP's Integrated Remote Assistant (IRA). To bypass the graphical boot screen you can either blindly press &escapekey; to get a text boot prompt, or (equally blindly) press H followed by &enterkey; to select the Help option described above. After that your keystrokes should be echoed at the prompt. To prevent the installer from using the framebuffer for the rest of the installation, you will also want to add vga=normal fb=false to the boot prompt, as described in the help text.