There is a difference between putting a boot loader in the Master Boot Record (MBR, first 512 sector/blocks?) and putting it on a partition.

In my old multi-boot environments, which I have not...

I do not know belinix and cannot answer your question. Sorry.

Looking at your drive, you already have four (4) partitions. If these are PRIMARY partitions, then you cannot create any more. I am unsure if Windows knows how to properly use Logical/Extended...

Can you provide more information?

You have a hard drive of X size (GB/TB). The partitions are as follows..?

Example:
250 GB HD
50 MB /boot ext2 partition
50 GB / ext3 partition (Ubuntu)...

I had similar problems on an old computer. Turns out, I had a bad cd-rom drive or a bad IDE2 connector on the motherboard or a bad BIOS. I never really isolated the problem. I got a minimal debian...

Here is a thread discussing various low resource using operating systems:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=575456

Please note that it is based upon image size (hard drive/storage size). ...

I tried this just now with my Mac as host os and Debian as guest os.

I configured the debian guest os to use a Host Interface. I then set its IP address manually (static).

I unplugged my host...

I am guessing this is related to the networking side of things? I am running Debian and FreeBSD guests on my Mac. Or are you asking about general install tips?

Installation Tips
- Use a fixed...

Drive order should not matter - unless it is a low level hardware error (set as slave but only hd on ide channel, for instance).

The only issue that comes readily to mind is when you set a drive...

1) Good CDs? Maybe burn at a slower rate?
2) Good CD drive? I have a problem on one pc where the cd drive is bad. I can install the debian minimal install and that is about it before the bugger...