For some reason booting from the netinstall cd did not detect / run the video drivers properly on my ibm thinkpad r31 for "dos" install mode.
Instead, when I put the cd in while running winxp the graphical installer was quite easy to use.
the biggest problem I had was that GRUB2 put Windows at hd(0,0) so I could only boot to debian, BUT I'd installed a very minimal system so ntfs-3g and no wpa-supplicant...
luckily I used nano /grub/
changed to hd(0,1) and windows booted fine!
add/remove programs to remove Debian Installer Loader (after all, GRUB2 is already in place)...
I wanted to see what my linux file system looked like (from windows)
READ & WRITE http://www.fs-driver.org/index.html
I chose Large file (virtualbox .vdi's) support, I'm using kernel 2.6.26 and left "read only" empty - I want to be able to throw .deb's in there!
debian5 installs 256Byte ext3 inodes, UNFORTUNATELY ext2if only reads 128Byte inode
sudo tune2fs -l /dev/sda2 | grep Inode
the solutions I've read involve either backing up, reformatting with 128 or before installing, using a different install cd to format the partition as a 128 Byte inode, and then running the Debian installer and choosing NOT to format the partition...
read only access to ext2/ext3 - http://www.diskinternals.com/linux-reader/ - http://www.chrysocome.net/explore2fs
(and to be able to eventually get files back and forth besides FAT32 usb stick?)