By locking up i mean i cannot do anything, and have to reboot and hope the cdrom drive recognizes the iso boot file on the cd. To go to the history of the HDD, it originally had windows xp media center edition on it, but then screwed up and told me i had to reactivate windows. I said screw it, and wiped it clean with Ubuntu Linux V. 6 (*all of this was on another computer) after a while i got another, better HDD for that comp and then put the old one into storage for a while, then brought it out for this comp im building. I proceeded to plug and play, but then my video card wasn't 'good' enough so i wiped the hard drive clean, made three linux partitions (primary), the 1st 200 MB, 2nd 300 mb, and the last 300 MB. When i tried to install it on the computer via live boot, it tried to install and i could only make out the word error before the window closed. i tried several more times, all of them failing, and also couldn't make out any more words. Thats when i plugged into my best desktop comp and installed it, the DSL on hda2, and grub on hda1. when i succussfully rebooted from the HDD, no cd, i customized the account, i tried to shut down, and it said error, saying that i hadn't backed up/ restored, and that the shut down was aborted. i said screw it and hit the power, then rebooted to see if i hadn't corrupted any files. When i saw that it was okay, i unplugged the HDD and plugged it into the other comp, where it did not even recognize it. i then, after a couple more tries, plugged back into the comp where i installed it on, where it had 2 screens of different inoperable errors, and then that it tried to kill the idle task. That is where im at right now... and yes it was the only HDD in the comp at the time, as the windows xp version on the new HDD that i have won't recognize slave drives... oh, and i heard horror stories, so to speak, that the 33k emachines tower motherboard can't handle anything but 32 bit os's, and specific ones at that... and to think i pride myself in my computer knowledge....
