hi, i'm a complete trial and error person with no redeeming qualities if not persistance. no clue about code, syntax, terminals etc. by some odd determination still managed to get various distros(mostly SuSE) to function in old Dell, Thinkpad, Hp laptops for senior citizens. it takes me weeks to install properly sometimes. still don't know how/why some work except as a tribute to Linux's hardiness. haven't known defeat till tried to install Linux on a "new" Durabook 15N with Celeron M. installed SuSE 10.2 readily and it worked great. its preinstalled XP ran no problem too. pressed my luck with 10.3 downloaded the 10.3 DVD, burned the iso, 'sum checked' it, and installed on another laptop without issue. when attempted on the Durabook everything was going fine when the all too familiar red "installation failed" appeared near the very end of the preinstall. a message flashed by indicating it was related to'("failure to prevent XP from hibernating before starting install, restart computer, close XP and begin install again")' paraphrased, as it was quick. nothing was modified w XP except defrag the hard drive a few times prior to the install. 10.2 installed no problems on same machine just a few weeks prior ? trouble is...can't boot XP, 10.2 or anything now, goes right to 'Grub Loading stage1.5 , please wait... Error 15' and limbo, with a flashing unresponsive cursor. did the hibernation somehow interfered with its mounting ? is there a remedy ? tried all my best prior 'blind' fixes but nothing. any hope, or direction(s) would be greatly appreciated. normally to access the XP recovery partition all you needed to do was hit F4 and the power button simultaneously...now it goes right to Grub error message as do all attempted intercessions. still can access BIOS little good it does though. at this point happiness could be as simple as banishing that D**m Error 15 message while a more complete solution is sought. thanks for reading this and any tips you may collectively offer, Tom McD

got impatient, 30 look-sees but no advice. i didn't have an XP CD/DVD that would work of the 3 i have. the laptop didn't come with one either. even tried Knoppix but screen just went blank after a hopeful start, then error 15. MS let me download and unzip a boot CD file but not burn it?! grrr! they bought out one of the companies that supposedly had a simple quick boot fix and promptly took the product off the market. now in a snit, i tried booting an old WIN98 CD. got me in past error 15 somehow ? since i don't know code i just typed whatever came to mind for a while in DOS till we both got bored. wouldn't close down with exit,restart,kill etc. so i just shut it off and reloaded the 10.3 DVD. crashed again with error 15 but let me reboot the DVD this time. tried my hand at partitioning blindly but no go. defaults wouldn't work either - blasted XP hibernation. finally had to kill off XP in its deep slumber by formatting the whole damn thing. had a great 10.3 system going an hour+ later. now if i can get xine installed and play DVDs, everyone here will be happy.