Another happy Ubuntu user

Can't boot any Ubuntu Live CD! Modern PC, tried everything I can think of...
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Hi all,

I'm fairly new to Linux, and started checking it out after my brother
ordered an Ubuntu CD from Shipit. I've had no end of problems trying to use
the Live CD.

My problem is thus. Every time I boot from a Live CD of Intrepid, Jaunty or
anything based off one of those, I get past the loading bar, and then
everything freezes. Sometimes I get to move the mouse for a few seconds,
sometimes I get the statrup sound, sometimes I see a black X in the middle
of the screen, sometimes I even get a few seconds on the desktop, but it
always freezes eventually. The screen locks up, the CD drive goes quiet and
won't eject, and the Num Lock and Scroll Lock lights on my keyboard start
flashing. Then I have to hard-reset. I've tried numerous Ubuntu based
distributions, including Mint, and all have the same problem, except the
Mint XFCE edition (which eventually worked, although Xubuntu Jaunty
doesn't), and Kubuntu Hardy (which works fine, although I haven't tried any
other Hardy distributions and don't really want an old version anyway).

What's bizzare is this is NOT an old or obscure computer. It is a HP
Pavilion a6220.uk bought in December 2007, with Intel Core 2 Duo E4400 2GHZ,
ATI Radeon graphics and 2GB of RAM. Yet every recent Ubuntu distribution I
try gives the same flashing keyboard freeze. What in the world could be the
problem? I've tried doing all this:


a.. Graphical safe mode/compatibility mode (made NO difference)
b.. Verifying disc integrity (says the disc is OK but still won't boot)
c.. Wubi (exactly the same happens when booting into my new Wubi install)
d.. Burning onto a DVD-RW instead of a CD-R
e.. Haven't tried burning at a lower speed yet, but the official Canonical
Intrepid disc, which is presumably a higher quality than my home-made ones,
suffer the same problem, so I can't see how this would help
f.. Using a Live CD instead of a USB
g.. Using an SD card
h.. Using a different IDE CD drive
i.. I've even tried using my brother's graphics card (a higher end Radeon,
from his newer Pavilion with an AMD Athlon which is able to boot these
discs) and it STILL didn't work
j.. Tested my RAM with Memtest86+, no errors found
All to no avail. The only thing I haven't tried is the alternate install
disc, purely because I don't want to go through all the partitioning
rigmarole only to find I still can't boot into the finished install. Can
anyone tell me what the problem is? Presumably it's hardware related, but if
it's not the RAM, CD drive or graphics card, what is it? And is the
alternate disc worth trying or not, considering I'd rather not wipe Windows
at this stage? Or should I just stick to old distributions, or go elsewhere
(PCLinuxOS works, but I don't really like it compared to Ubuntu and Mint)?
Please help, this is driving me mad!


.

Relevant Pages

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