[Wolves] Debian install gone horribly wrong :(

[scared at geneforensic.mine.nu]

Hi all.

I'm looking for a way out of a very deep hole that opened beneath me last
night.....

I have just setup a Smoothwall based web-share accross a friends house. 
Everything was fine until I discovered a WinXp Home machine incapable of
reading the network.  We played with all the variables we could think of
and eventually I convinced him of how cool Linux is and how given all the
troubles we may as well dual boot the harddrive with Debian.

Enter the problems......

The base system install process completes without mishap, however once the
CD has been ejected and the machine reboots, it is being reported that no
boot disk is installed and the system hangs.

Yes I have checked all connections.

I presumed this meant the motherboard recognises the MBR as being
infected, however deactivating the BIOS virus protection has not (as in
similar past occurances with other hardware) alleviated the situation.  
Neither has using WinXp install to reformat the entire drive in NTFS and
then reinstalling windows only.

Can anybody please suggest a nice way to test this  hardware and ideally
get it off my hands before i go truly insane???

Thanks very much, leo