Finally got around to installing Lenny. Everything went well. Passed MD5sum, disk verification, etc. Booted up and got a disk boot failure. Repeated the process and checked MBR and HD for errors. Nothing found out of the ordinary. Swapped out drive to my 'buntu install, fired it up and got GRUB read error. No number (I've had 15,22, etc.) It was just on before the lenny install. Tried new install of 'buntu on new drive. GRUB read error. Hmmm, 'buntu installs on my microwave oven without trouble. Any ideas on how to approach this? I'm checking my BIOS settings now.

If the disk is fairly new you may need to use a cable with 80 wires and you may need to put the master/slave jumper on "cable select".

A new cable and perhaps try this.

What about attaching just your CD drive to the mother boards controller connection and booting a live-cd as a system test. If it boots you have isolated the problem to the disk, if not it is something else. stress junkie points in the right direction; cables can produce sneaky faults.

Can you test boot the Ubuntu CD you are using just to be sure it is good?