Corona,

THANK YOU! Sorry for the "all caps shout", but you're the first person to offer me even a glimmer of hope as to what might be the problem. I can tell you that I finally broke down and installed Mint on my 320G drive that also happens to harbor my Windows XP OS. I only did so in order to graduate from the (live?) Mint 10 DVD session. I have yet to boot to it; not even sure if the installation was successful; hope I didn't inadvertently mess-up XP, but I have at least two backups of it, so no worries there.

I will do my level best to provide the data you've requested and, hopefully, can do so via the hard-drive-installed version. Please forgive my ignorance of Linux. I have very limited experience with it, but intend to soldier my way through the basics in the very near future.

Thanks again for your response!

Respectfully,
Bamm

---------- Post updated at 08:49 PM ---------- Previous update was at 08:42 PM ----------

Also, would it be helpful for me to provide a full list of my hardware?

Here are the specs of my current rig:

Intel Core i7-920 @ 4.25 GHz • EVGA E758-A1 • (2) Corsair XMS3 6GB Triple Channel DDR3 • Corsair HX650 • (2) EVGA GTX 260 Core 216 • Samsung 2443BWT • WD Caviar Black WD5001AALS 500GB; WD3200AAKS; (2) WDC WD2500KS; Verbatim 2T USB 3 External • SB X-Fi ExtremeMusic • CM Stacker STC-T01 • Swiftech H2O-320 + XSPC Reservoir; Corsair CMXAF2 • Logitech Elite KB • Logitech MX510 • Logitech Z-5500 • Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit SP1

Truly appreciate your help, Corona!

---------- Post updated at 09:14 PM ---------- Previous update was at 08:49 PM ----------

Again, my apologies to the UNIX/Linux veterans for posting the following graphic, but we can now see the newly-created Linux partitions on Disk 1. Ultimately, I'd like to install Mint 10 on Disk 4:



I realize this information has little bearing on the Linux side of the equation, but I felt compelled to provide it, if nothing more to document a quaint sanity check from a lifelong Redmond conscript like yours truly.




---------- Post updated 02-28-11 at 08:27 AM ---------- Previous update was 02-27-11 at 09:14 PM ----------

EDIT: My mistake. I'd forgotten that I'd swapped my XP install with my dedicated Steam drive; hence, the disk map above. Thing is, Mint doesn't boot. Is there an additional step required in order to launch Linux from disk? Some GRUB config I'm missing, or is that only needed for multiboot when competing OSes exist?

---------- Post updated at 10:07 AM ---------- Previous update was at 08:27 AM ----------

Corona, thanks for suggesting the Gentoo LiveCD option. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, Gentoo doesn't acknowledge my USB keyboard at the "livecd" prompt, whereas keyboard input is possible during "pre-boot".

This is as far as I can get: