the previous screen statement says "

Booting from local disk...
GRUB Loading stage1.5. "

the distro CD Im using is Ubuntu version 6.06 LTS for a x86 PC

screen shows cursor blinking but never more than that....

system:

C2D 2.4Ghz
Gigabyte P965 MB

brand new PC that runs Windows XP just fine (I took the XP drive out to eliminate any confusion)


If I boot from the Ubuntu CD it gets to

"Uncompressing Linux... Ok, booting the kernel."

and again the screen never advances past that... (ok I waited 15 mins but thats already ridiculous)
if the process needs more time than 30 secs it should present the user with some kind of feedback
this must be some real SFB software

Not sure whats quite wrong here....

Google on "Gigabyte P965 linux". I see a number of issues. Here's one talking about the bios settings just to boot from a liveCD.

http://gentoo-wiki.com/HARDWARE_Gigabyte_P965_DS-4
Here's a long thread about Ubuntu and, I think, the MSI version of that motherboard. I didn't read all the way through it. http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=233540

Use 'all-generic-ide', 'irqpoll' and 'pci=nommconf' as kernle parameters.

I simply downloaded the latest x386 desktop (standard download) of Ubuntu, burned it on my MBP, fed it to my PC, booted into the distro, and installed the distro....

Mission accomplished. Im sure the support for the JMicron controller was the issue, and it appears to have been overcome in the latest Ubuntu desktop release. Hope this helps !

Btw, I have no idea how to edit kernel parameters, I used a much more basic solution...

Why don't you try the 64bit distros? the ones with x86_64 in their name, coz since you have the same hardware as me. Difference is tremendous boost in operation speed compared to i386.

"Btw, I have no idea how to edit kernel parameters, I used a much more basic solution..."

Whatever it takes to get you working! Good job!