[H-GEN] X locks up desktop, even with live cds

[Troy Piggins]

Sorry if this is longwinded - I'm trying to give all details.

My home desktop was a dual boot WinXP/Ubuntu machine.  I rarely
use the linux desktop, preferring to use WinXP for day to day
stuff and ssh into my other linux server for mail/news etc.
It has been so long since I actually booted into the linux
desktop that I can't remember how well it ran.

The other day I had the bright idea to download the latest Ubuntu
6.10 desktop .iso and give it a run.  Booted up the live cd, all
appeared ok - got firefox running etc.

Went to install it to the hard drive and it locked up[1] at the part
of the install process trying to open gparted.  Rebooted, this
time it locked up before I could get to the live cd's desktop.
Rebooted, this time got further into the install process.
Gparted opened up, I chose the old ext3 partition to mount as "/"
and the old swap etc.  Then locked up again.

Got the shits a bit, thought I'd give up for now and boot into
WinXP.  :(  Looks like part of the install before the lockup
overwrote grub and can't boot into anything at all.  Nothing.
Now the fun started.

Tried the WinXP install cd recovery mode - fixmbr and the other
tools.  That didnt' work.

Tried some other live cds I had and all of them locked up, some
wouldn't even finish booting - Puppy Linux, PCLinuxOS 2007 TR2.

Then I thought maybe it was some of my devices, so I unplugged
the USB cordless keyboard and mouse, plugged in PS2 keyboard and
an old non-cordless USB mouse.  Still locked up.

Tried Gentoo minimal live cd.  It worked fine!  Was running it
for hours, no lockup.  Mounted the WinXP partition and could see
all the files there.  Similarly my FAT32 data partition, so
looked like partitions and data intact, but MBR stuffed.

Unfortunately you can't install from the
AMD64 minimal live cd!  The main difference I can tell is that
the Gentoo wasn't running X, it was all console.

I'm downloading the AMD64 install cd as I write this and will try
it tonight.

Am I missing anything?  The graphics card is Nvidia 256Mb 6800GT
(or something like that).  I have always had success with nvidia
cards and linux, installing the distros own drivers, then once
working use nvidias own binaries.

What can I do to trace the source of the problem?

[1] Locked up by my definition is the mouse and keyboard no
longer worked.  Mouse's red laser went out.

-- 
Troy Piggins             ,-O   (o-    O         All your sigs are belong to us.
http://piggo.com/~troy  O   )  //\     O
RLU#415538               `-O   V_/_  OOO
hackerkey://v3sw5HPUhw5ln4pr6OSck1ma9u6LwXm5l6Di2e6t5MGSRb8OTen4g7OPa3Xs7MIr8p7