So my folks Windows XP box started having difficulty booting. Most of the time it would go to boot and suddenly you'd be back at the BIOS, then the "Windows didn't shutdown properly last time" menu and then once you selected "boot normally" the cycle would begin again. Usually eventually you'd get lucky and Windows would boot (but sometimes they gave up first). Not good... So I burned a copy of Hardy Heron, the newest Version of Ubuntu, released just last month. It loaded up and recognized all the hardware and installed, no trouble.