Noob: erratic live disc behaviour

[Jon of Kent]

Hello all, and sorry if something like this has been asked already - I can't find it.

I've made a live disc of Isadora, and it works fine on my own computer (running Helena). However, I'm trying to make it work on a friend's old laptop, which has a corrupted copy of Windows XP on it. However, when I put the live disc in, it goes ok for a while, right up to the point at which the desktop should appear, and then it just stops. CD drive stops going and it doesn't do anything else.

It's clearly not an issue with live CDs (whatever that would be) as my old-as-the-hills Ubuntu 7.04 CD works fine.

Any idea what the problem is?

His computer is a Compaq Presario v4000. 2GHz Intel Pentium M 760; 1GB DDR2 PC2700 SDRAM 333MHz; Intel 915GM Graphics Media Accelerator 128MB.

With effusive thanks for anything that will make this work...

(I should say also that what I'm trying to do is just install an OS on his computer which will make it good enough to do word-processing and internet-browsing on. It doesn't have to be Mint, but I'd like it to be, as he is even more incompetent with computers than I am. So any alternative ideas are also welcome if you feel that way inclined.)

Jon

[oobetimer]

X-server is falling down. You could boot using a single mode, and try to fix the graphics. When the bootplash comes, press tab --> remove quiet splash and add single

Something about U-graphics..

http://ubuntu-tutorials.com/2010/05/06/ ... orkaround/

[Jon of Kent]

Great - thank you. I confess I didn't understand a word of that, but you obviously know what you're talking about, and it can't be too hard to decode it. I thought it must be something fairly simple like that.

Thanks again