(posted this to a Linux forum, cross-posting here as recommended by the install guide troubleshooting instructions)
I recently purchased a new Lenovo Thinkpad T420i and am having problems installing the latest version of Squeeze from CD. After receiving the laptop, I started it up, configured Windows 7, and confirmed everything is working correctly. Next I went through the Debian installer, which completed successfully. I'll be dual-booting Windows 7 and Debian, so at the partitioning stage I resized my NTFS partition, added a shared VFAT partition, then used the "Guided" install to create my root and swap partitions. My partition layout is: /dev/sda1 NTFS, primary (small, not sure what Windows uses this for) /dev/sda2 NTFS, primary (the main Windows one I resized) /dev/sda3 NTFS, primary (the Lenovo recovery partition at the end of the drive) /dev/sda4 extended /dev/sda5 FAT32, logical (shared between Windows and Linux) /dev/sda6 Linux, logical, bootable (Linux root) /dev/sda7 Linux swap, logical During the boot loader phase, I chose the default (install grub to MBR). After the installation completed successfully and I rebooted, I get: Intel Boot Agent PXE-E61: media test failure which I see means the drive could not be booted. It then drops me back to a Boot Menu where I can select which device to boot, and choosing my hard drive goes to a black screen for a few seconds, then kicks me back to the Boot Menu. I assumed something was wrong with grub, so I booted the CD into rescue mode and chose to reinstall grub onto the Master Boot Record. But nothing changed. Just to experiment, I went into fdisk, deleted all my new partitions (leaving just the Windows ones), and tried rebooting, but the same error happened. I then went through the Debian installer again, being careful to set everything up correctly, but still, the device won't boot. I'm not even getting to the grub boot screen, so something is wrong even before the point. Reinstalling grub to the Master Boot Record (grub-install /dev/sda) isn't changing anything. How can I troubleshoot this? Thanks in advance.
