Thanks Sandeep for your reply! I agree there must be something wrong with the motherboard. But I don't understand why win xp comes to life while xubuntu comes to a halt in the booting process? I use a USB wireless mouse and it seems to be working fine with win xp (except that it doesn't charge devices, so it must be partly dysfunctional). If a jumper setting is not right, like you suggest, why is that not affecting the win xp boot process or for that matter its functioning! The ethernet card's working fine as well. I don't know if the graphics card(nvidia) is working or not for I haven't hooked it up.
This is the first instance where xubuntu has failed and win xp has worked well. I thought it was always the other way around! It could be because hardware was made for MS products, and not specifically for linux as this post <http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1147474> seems to suggest. I don't know! In the end I need my system to run x/ubuntu. I will look at the jumper stuff on sunday and report back to you. Am not very familiar with hardware so have to tread carefully there. Biswajit aka orthodoc -- ubuntu-in mailing list ubuntu-in@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-in