Harry thanks for the info. I spend some time reading the online manuals and FAQ. I decided to try the Debian install as you mentioned in your earlier post - I will leave DSL install for later, it should suit my other smaller, older machine in the storeroom.

I managed to restore the HD to the original format, i.e. it now has just one C (FAT32) partition with a total of 4G and Win98 running on it.

I have a debian-testing-i386-netinst.iso CD#1 burned on a CD, I wish to have it install on my HD and a multi-boot (Win98 and Linux-Debian). Do I have to create partitions in DOS using for eg XOSL before booting from the debian-testing iso CD and install Debian? Did I miss a step? I would rather stick with partitioning and creating multi-boot with XOSL and installing Debian for now.

By the way, I just want to install to HD simply because it will work slightly faster and the CD-ROM drive in the Pentium machine is quite noisy!