I just bought a new laptop - an acer aspire 5673. I have been using linux for the past 4 years or so, mainly running from liveCDs.

I just downloaded some recent live cds lately, like knoppix 5 and centOS 4.4 but they are not booting. I tried with my previous linux cds to test if they would work, but no. None of them are working on my laptop. They are all freezing at the hardware detecting phase, primarily when checking the pcmcia card. So I tried booting them by disabling the detection of pcmcia. Still they hanged after launching udev.

Booting from failsafe helped getting on, but its a pain to use failsafe with your USB and so on not available.

Only linux which booted alright is Ubuntu 6.06 LTS.

What can I do to get through this? Coz this is really frustrating.

My laptop is loaded with 1GB RAM, a 512MB VRam, bluetooth, wi-fi, ir, pcmcia, express card, 5-in-1 card reader and USB and Firewire ports and the other usual ports.

Can anyone please help? Thanks...

Laptops can be difficult sometimes. Try booting with the option acpi=off. I've found this useful with hyper-threading processors too.