I just built a new system, an ECS pt890T-a mobo, with a celeron D 2.66 ghz.

I've tried 2 different cd rom drives, known to work ok in other systems. It shows the first flash screen with the choices to start ubuntu etc.

However, the count down timer (30secs or so) that should appear immediately does not appear for about 45 seconds, during which time I cannot do anything on the keyboard, i.e. arrow keys, return key, does not respond.

After the 45 seconds, I can enter info as per normal, and I tried the various commands such as noapic etc. and it begins, but seems to hang again. I can see some activity on the cd rom drive, then nothing. After 10 minutes of this, I gave up.

Any ideas?

Oh, I can boot up a windows system and it sees the cd rom no sweat.

Have you tried the "live cd" before?

Yes, this same cd will boot ok on 3 other computers, although on 1 of them I do have to enter some special boot options. But in all other cases, there is no hangups just getting to the first screen. These other systems would usually lock up after it tried to load following this first screen.

It really seems like the cd rom is timing out. It'll load a bit, then a long idle period, then something happens, and another long idle period.

I was wondering if anyone else has seen this before and if there was some sort of workaround.

There is only a couple of things I can thing of, one a hardware compatibility problem. If I understand you, after about 45 seconds it will continue to load and you do end up with an operating system. The only thing I can suggest if so is to try a different distro and maybe a newer one if the one you are using now is older.