well as something to do with an aging machine it is quite fun anyway. Maybe I am becoming nerdy later in life.

Typing on debian as we speak, so far this is quick and yes very utilitarian.
Will be learning as I go, I do like the look of iceweasel again very agile. Firefox had a very layered affect and in my experience was subject to crashing.
Im off to explore, again thanks for some great advicwe and I will be back.

Iceweasel is firefox rebranded. Glad to know you like it. Which desktop environment?

I will need to take any tutorial now because I don't know and cant tell you, I am a noob.

wheezy 7.7

check the system resources and Im using less than 20% with grooveshark and facebook along with this opened.

It's usually a good idea to post information on your hardware with a question like this. I've never used an emachine and I would imagine others are probably not familiar with its hardware either and are not likely to spend their time looking it up. You never indicated which Mint version you were trying to use. The only ones I am aware of that are still supported are Mint 13 and 17. Most major distributions such as Mint and Ubuntu have minimum hardware requirements listed on their site so you can check that and compare it to your hardware to see if it will work. Hopefully, your Debian install will be the answer.

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To show desktop environmentAlso if problem is soled mark as solved using "Thread Tools" above

Athlon 3800+
1GB DDR2 160GB HDD
Windows Vista Home Premium
NVIDIA GeForce 6150 SE

was trying mint 17 cinnamon rebecca

thanks for that I will keep that in mind should anything like this be needed.

Calling this as solved. taking the time to investigate my machine would have saved much time, but I did learn somethings.
thanks so much. I am happy with the debian.

The problem you reported with your Mint install was most likely due to the Nvidia Graphics card. Had the same situation when I installed Mint and Ubuntu and it was easily resolved by installing new drivers. The options are different in Ubunt/Mint and depending upon the Desktop environment. If you decide to install either in the future it should be an easy fix.