The last lot of windows 10 updates crashed my lenovo pc and it wouldnt boot. Tried booting from a disc but to no avail. Bought linux user and booted sparkylive from the cover disc. followed the links to install but wouldnt boot up on restarting - boots from cd no problem. Is it safe to use if I just boot from the cd everytime? would I be at risk online ? Would I need some kind of antivirus? Would I need to continually use a more up to date version of linux ( i.e buy a new disc every couple of months ). Also is it possible to view files that I had using the windows OS ( photos etc ) through the linux OS?
Sorry for waffling and asking what are probably daft questions but any advice would be much appreciated

If you boot from live medium, then all data you create, a lost, when you reboot.
You should install to hdd/ssd.

Safe from what? As pointed out above, whenever you reboot any changes you have made are lost. That's by design as opposed to an actual install. So if you deliberately or accidentally downloaded any malware, reboot and it's gone.

Need an antivirus? That's a personal choice. Many Linux users never use any, many do especially if they are connected to any windows machine.

No, you would not "need" to do that but you could. You could also download any one of the 500+ different Linux distributions for free and burn them to a DVD or put them on a flash drive and either use them as is or use them to install. If you are using a 'Live' Linux system which is read-only, you won't actaully be able to update it for that reason. Theoretically, I guess you could if you had a lot of RAM and didn't reboot.

Yes it is. Many Linux distributions have the software necessary to do this available, don't know about Sparky as I've never used it. If this is your first experience, you might try a little research into other distributions which may be more suitable. See the link below.

https://distrowatch.com/

What happened when you tried to boot? Did you alter the BIOS settings of the computer to disable the fast boot facility? You have to do that for Linux to work alongside Windows.

Only if you download mysterious files using Linux and then transfer them to Windows!

Once you have a Linux distribution installed, you can update to a new version over the internet.

Yes. Linux can read and write to Windows disk partitions. If you have the side panel displaying in the file manger, the Windows partition should be listed: just click to use it.

I'd never heard of Sparky either so I went to their site. They say:
The distro is based on Debian but is deliberately lightweight (a bit like AntiX I suppose). Perhaps Mint with Mate or Xubuntu would be better for a first-timer?

1 members found this post helpful.

I did try to install it but when I try to boot from HDD it starts booting up but then gets stuck on a blank screen with the cursor visible.

Agreed. Linux Mint is much more user friendly to new linux users.

The first thing to do is see if it's a graphics problem. That doesn't seem too likely, as Sparky works without installing. When you get to the black screen, press Ctrl-Alt-F2. If that gets another black screen, but one with a prompt asking you to log in, then it is a graphics problem and we can decide what to do next.

Did you disable the fast boot feature before installing? If you didn't do it and see if that fixes it. If it doesn't, try disabling secure boot. That usually displays an error message on the screen rather than a blank, but it would still be worth trying. As you can see, my diagnostic methods are rather primitive and involve a certain amount of random tinkering!