[Pkg-exppsy-maintainers] Trouble installing Debain (anything)

[Per B. Sederberg]

Calling Proponents of Debian!!

I'm reaching my wit's end trying to install Debian (sid or testing) on
my new laptop (an Thinkpad X61).  It has no cdrom drive so I'm using
this unetbootin program to start a net install from within windows
(Vista really does suck).  The problem is that the hard drive is not
detected during the debian install and I can't do a thing past that.

Searching the web finds no issues like this (except for one post that
suggested changing SATA into Compatibility mode, which I did.)

I really would like to run debian, but my main requirement is that I
run linux, which I can't currently do.

I realize there is probably not enough information, but do you have
any thoughts or suggestions?  I have about one more hour before this
laptop gets Ubuntu, which I hope does not happen.

Thanks,
Per