Re: Problems with the Installer

On Sat, 22 Aug 2026 19:41:17 +0300
Владимир Корольков <[email protected]> wrote:

> Hello,
> 
> I tried to install Debian 13 (UEFI) on my computer. Everything was
> great, before:

First of all, the installer has a beginners mode and an expert mode.
Pretty much everyone who uses this list will use 'expert', which gives
you more choices, the downside being that it's useless if you don't
understand what it is asking. My point is that if you don't use the
expert install, you may see things we don't know about.
> 
> 1. I have a USB Wi-Fi adapter. I turned it off bevause it is hard to
> install Wi-Fi drivers. The computer was completely had no Internet.
> While the installer checking DHCP, it said that connecting was failed
> (I planned to connect the PC to the Internet later).
> If it failed, is it possible to connect to the Web with Ethernet
> after that?

It is, and I hope it is more civilised now. Many many years and several
Debian versions ago, I did a non-expert install and had no DHCP running
in my network, so the installer didn't put in any networking software.
Fortunately, I had another computer available to sort it out.

These days, I would hope it would set up networking and give you a
link-local address on any interface it could find. Does the computer
have a wired Ethernet port (many laptops don't now)? If it does, I
would advise connecting it by cable to your router, even if it has to
be temporary during the installation.
> 
> 2. My computer has UEFI instead of BIOS.
> I turned off fast boot. When the installer said: "If you have
> different OSes on your PC, why don't you use BIOS mode?". It confused
> me, because I wanted to delete Windows and leave Debian on it.

Concerning the installer modes, I've never seen a message like this,
and I have recently installed to a UEFI laptop. Of course, by then my
Windows had got to the point of being unable to install updates, so it
had been wiped.

My advice here would be to stick with UEFI. A computer which has UEFI
booting may not have a properly implemented BIOS system. Don't ask for
extra trouble. Also, your drive will probably be formatted in GPT
style, which BIOS may not understand.
> 
> 3. I have two hard disks (maybe SSD). In the box which was asking me
> which disk I want to use. There was SanDisk Cruzer Blade, it was my
> USB drive which was used to install Debian. There was also only one
> (I had two of them!) hard disk that had 500 GB. I never had that
> weird disk. One was ~100 GB drive which has Windows 7 installed,
> another drive was D:, it was empty but had ~300 GB.
> Maybe it means to use the hard disk that I never had?!
> 
Yes, it will ask where to install Debian, even if the only second
choice is the external drive you are installing from. Tell it to use the
empty space, what Windows calls D:. If you're absolutely certain you
will never ever want your current Windows or any data stored with it,
you can tell the installer to use the entire disc, but again my advice
would be to keep it for now. You can always reformat the Windows
partition later to provide more space. Definitely, if there is any data
stored on the computer that you wish to keep, copy it off onto a USB
stick or external hard drive first.

If you have further trouble, you should probably tell us a bit about
the computer e.g. whether laptop or desktop, as laptops sometimes have
problems that desktops don't. The approximate age of the computer may
also be helpful. If it is a computer which had Windows 7 installed from
new, it may have a 32 bit processor, in which case the current Debian
cannot be installed. I would hope the installer would have discovered
that and told you if that was the case.

-- 
Joe