"...text mode...[s]o the only thing to do is tap the reset button...graphical install...freezes the box." When it rains, it pours!. There's a legion of Linux haters out there who gave up when they ran into seemingly insurmountable problems like this. I'm not going to be an apologist for the Linux folks, but I will say I've had my share of balky installs with all sorts of O/Ses, not just Linux. I had no difficulty installing BDI-4.30 on two very different boxes, one an HP8776c running a 1GHz AMD T-bird Athlon CPU, one a Dell XPS T450 running a 450 MHz Intel PIII, so I don't have any learning experience to drawn from for advice. As I said in my first email, for me it "doesn't get any better than this." I'll be interested to hear what you decide is the source of your difficulties and what you did about it. Good luck, Gene. Regards, Kent