I have an old piece of junk Dell that had XP installed and then one day it stopped loading windows and giving the following message: missing .dll file windows could not load or something like that. I burned the latest Mint ISO image to a dvd and changed the boot sequence to boot from the dvd. I get the pretty mint splash screen and the option to run the program from the disc but then after about 5 minutes of the disc spinning and the hard drive chirping it just stops and doesn't do anything else. Basically what I wind up with is a black screen with a cursor arrow in the middle of my monitor.
I'm not sure how to make this work, any suggestions would be appreciated.
On a side note I put the same dvd in my work laptop and was able to run Mint off of the live disk with no problems.

1) What is the Model of your computer? OK Dell, but Dell what?

2) How much RAM have you got?

Sounds like there might be a bad hard drive on the original Dell. If the Windows install is dead and the LiveCD works elsewhere, you may have to check the hard drive itself. Also, as arochester said, we'll be able to help more with the model number and more detail about your situation.

I smell disk errors, not just a bit of file system corruption affecting windows.

Run the Mint Live CD and see if you can start "Disk Utility" - you may need to download package palimpsest.

With the experiences I have had a live disk will run without a hard drive connected at all. Most Linux install disks have memtest as well which will test the RAM. I would see if a Windows Rescue disk will mount your current install of windows. If your cd/dvd Rom is not perfect it might struggle with your live disk. I have Dvd/cds that will only work on one of my three player/burners.

I have been able to fix Windows that reports a missing .dll by downloading and installing a .dll from e.g. http://www.dll-files.com/

The fact that the OP couldn't get the Mint installation to run suggested a hard disk problem to me, but yes it could very well be a CD drive.

I guess I will have to stop drinking at lunch; the machine is an AcerPower S285 with 256mb of ram (I said it was old!) and also the error message is: the following file is missing or corrupted,
windows/system 32/config/system. Sorry I sent you guys on a wild goose chase.

Not so much. The computer manufacturer was irrelevant to most of our discussion. If the system file is missing, it is looking more likely that there is some sort of hard drive issue, though with only 256MB of RAM you may want to try something more lightweight, like Puppy.

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Thanks for the tip; I was able to get Puppy up and running but I was not able to get it to find an internet connection. I have been so indoctrinated with windows finding all of my drivers perhaps I need to search for them? I have tried a direct connection to the modem and also to my router but It still does not let me get a connection.
I'm not sure if I am going against protocol by replying with this or if I should have started a new thread. I am new to message boards and gentle guidance is appreciated.

Yeah, maybe this does deserve its own thread. Your question is no longer about installing Linux Mint.

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