So Windows is back on (nice clean fast new install which will remain that way for about … ooh a week) and I finally got Mandrake to install but only in text based mode.
It seems there is something in my system at home that Linux just doesn’t like and I can get about 5 – 7 minutes of runtime out of the system before it locks up. The main suspect is the graphics card but I won’t know until I get the spare one home tonight. It seems that maybe I should start looking for a cheap spare system with no components made before 2001…
It was the graphics card for my cousin, too. He got an old one for $5 from a used bin at a local computer shop and graphics worked fine after that.