General :: Inspiron 2600 Install Success (finally) - Dual Boot Now Gone Bad?

Dual Boot Gone Bad I have been trying to set up a dual boot laptop on an old Dell Inspiron 2600. I got the machine cheap, and it is in excellent condition. I have upgraded the Bios to A11 (it was A4 when I got it) and put in a 40 Gig HD. It is maxed-out in memory at 360 Mb. It has the awful (by today's standards) Intel i810 video mess. I created an NTFS (primary) partition on the first half of the drive and installed XP, updated through SP3. I then attempted to install Debian 6 (squeeze) on the second half. I was unable to get anywhere with an installation using a squeeze Live CD. The screen just goes blank about 60 seconds into the installation, and everything freezes up. In rescue mode, I can get some screen play, but the rendering is awful and half of what you do is actually off the screen and you can't see what it is you are doing.

I hooked up a separate monitor, and was able to watch the installation just fine until it reached a certain point in the boot-up, then everything again went blank and the machine again froze up. I tried Ubuntu 10.10, Ubuntu 10.04 LTS, Mint 10, and Ultimate Edition 10.10 with varying degrees of success, but none completing and working.

The Ubuntu 10.04 LTS actually installed, but I could not get sufficient graphics in either a terminal (entered at the end of the install process just before re-booting) or booting to text only mode to sudo a change to the xorg.conf file that was native to the system, rather than to the installation package itself (which goes away when you reboot).

I was able to install 'squeeze' using the 'expert graphical install' mode under 'advanced options' (it lets you select a screen resolution when it starts the install), and when I got to the end of the installation, before re-booting, I told the system to open a monitor as 'root', and wrote what I thought would have been an appropriate xorg.conf file in the /etc/X11 subdirectory using nano (monitor and driver specs, as well as suggested xorg.conf entries obtained elsewhere on the web).

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I'M SO CLOSE! Can somebody help me and tell me how to edit GRUB so it again recognizes the partition... or reinstall GRUB.... or let me know if the problem is with the XP MBR.... And if so, maybe hopefully lead me to how to fix THAT issue without screwing up the Debian install (I know this isn't an "UGH"- Windows forum). If worst come to worst, I can delete all the Linux partitions, use my Windows install disk to repair the MBR, and reinstall lenny.... Hopefully with GRUB not losing XP this time. I hate to do it because it has taken me a couple of days to get ANY form of Linux actually working right on this machine..... but at least I know how to do it now and what distro will actually work.

Also, anybody with a clue as to why squeeze won't boot after what appears to be a successful installation (with the above-listed xorg.conf file in place) and what I can do to fix that issue would also be appreciated. It will be nice to have a system installed that has current support next year.