Need Advice On Which OS To Pick

[SaderRaider]

My friend's PC is completely all over the place due to a motherboard just deciding to die. Problem is that now with new motherboard, it still isn't working. The PC works up until the point it boots into XP, then it's just black screen. He can't get into safe mode or anything.

Seeing as it starts to 'break' when it chooses XP, my idea was to get a Linux OS for him to boot into so he can access his drives/data and see what the problem is more in depth with running programs to find problems with hardwear and so on.

So what OS would be best for him to run to help him fix his PC?

Sorry for the bad English, I'm not good at it :)

[cardinals_fan]

Puppy is a good live CD.

[angelsguitar]

My friend's PC is completely all over the place due to a motherboard just deciding to die. Problem is that now with new motherboard, it still isn't working. The PC works up until the point it boots into XP, then it's just black screen. He can't get into safe mode or anything.

Seeing as it starts to 'break' when it chooses XP, my idea was to get a Linux OS for him to boot into so he can access his drives/data and see what the problem is more in depth with running programs to find problems with hardware and so on.

So what OS would be best for him to run to help him fix his PC?

Sorry for the bad English, I'm not good at it :)

If you changed the motherboard, you need to reinstall Windows XP from scratch (that is, reformat the disk and do a fresh, clean install). Then install the drivers and software you had. I believe the problem you are experiencing is due to the conflict between the old motherboard drivers and the new motherboard. Well, that's my advice if you decide to keep Windows for some reason...

Of course, you can try Linux too. As stated in the earlier post, maybe you can try Linux on a Live CD first, like Ubuntu (the desktop install cd is a live cd). If it is a computer with low resources or old hardware and cpu, the I agree with the earlier post: Puppy Linux would be a great alternative.

Another alternative would be to dual boot; that is, install Windows first and then install Ubuntu (or the Linux distro of your choice). When Linux is installed, it would create a menu at startup from which you can choose which OS to boot a at the time. Just remember to install them in that order: Windows, then Linux.

[Cap'n Skyler]

http://www.linux.com/download_linux/:popcorn: