Hello, I am not a techie but can follow basic guidance and any help would be appreciated. My aunt's old laptop needed a new hdd and she had no OS recovery discs. I've inserted the new hdd but my old xp disc doesn't work, nor my Vista, both legit copies and I don't have enough knowledge to sort this out but in reality I want to avoid MS Windows. Instead I've tried to install Linux Mint - without success - (I just get Linux Mint desktop display, no icons and lots of noise as if my DVD drive is working away but doesn't get any further. From forums I've read, this may be due to the Celeron M processor? Can anyone advise what is the best Linux for this old laptop. Would Antix Linux be ok? If so any specific guidance would be great. Alternative suggestions appreciated. Only want to use the laptop for internet browsing, email and viewing/storing family photos.

Thanks in advance.

Try mint with MATE desktop or even lxde. The older lightweight versions will be faster and more stable. Add as much RAM as the machine will accept. This will help a great deal.

You can also try Ubuntu.

1 members found this post helpful.

The processor speed is ok.
How much ram do you have?
I ran debian on my acer aspire 3620 2Gigs ram with no problem.
Running live-cd's/dvd's isn't all that great on my acer. But Puppy & Antix ran pretty good.
Your system is upgradable to 2Gigs also.
http://www.crucial.com/usa/en/compat...te-2300-series

Thanks for your replies, I'll certainly try and upgrade and use your suggestions. I appreciate I need to format the HDD but will the new OS do this? Sorry it's not my field and I'm out of my depth.