Hello, I am trying to help a friend of mine install linux for the first time on his laptop [MSI AMD64bit dual core 320 gig hdd nvidia geforce 9600m gt 4 gig ram].
So far I have had more problems than solutions. When I try to load the live cd, I get dropped to busybox with the following:

(initramfs) [ 87.100509] ata3.00: revalidation failed (errno= -5)
[ 93.072537] ata3: exception Emask 0x1 SAct 0x0 Serr 0x0 action 0x0 t4
[ 93.072630] ata3: irq-stat 0x40000008


We partitioned the drive for Vista as well as linux- vista is up and running and so far the only luck I've had with linux was installing LinuxMint. That was all fine and dandy, except now the video is not working properly (vlc when full screen has a crazy refresh lag).

Any advice and help is appreciated!

-Monty

maybe check that your live cd was copied correctly, and it was not corrupted. Ata3 refers to connection of storage devices, could be hard drive,cd-rom, usb etc.

We got it sorted- tried another disc and we're off.

Thanks!

No worries mate. Cheers!!!