* Former electronics technician: Pending retirement at 62 (6 months).

* Have built my own desktop PC's from bare-bones since 2006

* Desktop PC:

Shuttle SN78,  de-commisioned.

*Notebook PC:

Lenovo Z585, Windows 7 64bit.

I want to try Linux, but I an having great difficulty installing it - Linux Mint - on either of the machines listed above.

Problem: Failure to boot past the flashing cuser screen... system locked-up...must remove power to shut-down.