I am getting a frozen screen once i try to load linux mint through grub in dual boot
 

hi
I had planned to start using linux mint (cassandra) today after a very satisfying trial with the live CD that came with a PC magazine.
1.

However, once i finished installation and restarted the computer, i got a non-graphic GRUB screen which is allowing me to choose the linux kernel i want to boot from or windows xp. Whilst, Windows XP seems to work fine, i cannot use the linux set up. (I apologise for sounding so vague, I am a medical student and do not exactly know how to frame my problem better). The screen says "Starting ... please wait" and then just remains blank for several minutes. I need to manually restart to get to the boot screen again.I would appreciate it, if i were guided.

2.

Secondly, while installing the OS i had allotted 9.5 GB for linux (i had to resort to guided partitioning, as in the manual mode it kept saying "root main [or menu] not assigned".). Nevertheless, now when i log in to windows, i can see approximately 15 GB has gone missing.

Is there something i can do to remedy the situation?
any help would be extremely appreciated.
thanks

First try to boot from live cd and mount your Linux partition. Look for var/log/syslog file, which is system messages log file. Let us see it.
If system hangs before initializing processes, syslog file will be empty. In this case you should disable graphical boot screen to see grub messages during boot-up. This can be done in boot/grub/menu.lst file (put it here to).

thanks
 

thanks ...
i will look into your advice