Debian install breaks on 'Configuring Locales'

[John Hechtman]

Below is a copy of my most recent post to LinuxQuestions.  Can you help with this? I moved from Suse to Slackware, because the stock Suse was WAY slow. And then from Slackware to Debian because no one can tell me why my floppy drive mounts in read-only in Slackware when using any GUI. Now I've dl'd the Debian CD iso images and burned them to disks. This is with the 'Woody' 30r2-i386 set of seven CD's, plus the updates CD.   I started the install, and it went fine through the first part.  But it breaks each time at 'Configuring Locales'. You can select more locales, but the 'Enter' key will not give an 'accept' - it just sits there. No key on the keyboard will 'accept', and get me past this. In fact, after it breaks on the first cycle, the 'Enter' key brings up the 'Help' menu. This is using disk 1 - the 'vanilla' kernel. I tried it with bf24 to see if that helps - it didn't. Can't I get a stock version of Linux to run 'out of the box', with decent speed? I'm not asking a lot, Web access, email, and a functioning floppy drive... Further, the Debian install doc, which was lovingly detailed up to Chapter 8, breaks down and does not deal with several of the screen options presented during setup. Including, of course, the 'Configuring Locales' option, or any way of avoiding it. Can I scream now, or must I wait?