Halfway through a system 7.1.1 install and...

Where did your "Programs" disk come from? Scribbling the word "Programs" on a disk with a crayon isn't going to fool it.

An alternative to 7.1.1 is 7.5.3 (freely available from Apple; no need to download an unauthorized OS release of dodgy ancestry). If the size bothers you, just use Gamba's "digital diet" procedure to make it the equivalent of 7.1.1. You can read the details at http://home.earthlink.net/~gamba2/753min.txt

So I had to just turn the machine off before the install finished and now when I boot up I get the old "The 'System' file on this startup disk may be damaged. The Installer can be used to repair this disk."

I tried to create a Network Access bootable disk using this procedure: http://lowendmac.com/brierley/08pb/classic-mac-boot-floppy.html

But the machine keeps spitting the disk out and continues to display the same error message.

Help!

What machine are you installing 7.1 on, and do you have another old Mac to verify the network disk you made? Pretty much any Mac that came with a floppy drive will boot from the 7.5 network disk -so the disk wasn't made correctly or the Mac.....?

As said the 7.5 disk is available free as is Sys6 and Sys7 - perhaps starting there and upgrading?

I mean I did exactly what the procedure in the link I posted above told me to do. It seemed to work fine, no error messages were displayed. What am I doing wrong?

Ok I finally used what little knowledge of UNIX I have to figure out what I was doing wrong and make a proper boot disk.

Thanks to JRL for helping me get my computer to boot up again using the hard disk.

Now I have to start working on getting a lean mean version of 7.5 on this sucker.

Update: Installed a lean version of 7.5.3, now to replace those leaky gross caps on the logic board. Bleh.