I had the same problems with just about any flavor of Linux. Expert mode = Blank screen. So I went with "Failsafe" these are the last lines before it locksup on me

ESR value before enabling vector: 00000000
ESR value after enabling vector: 00000000
Using local APCI timer interrupts
calibrating ACPI timer ...
.....CPU clock speed is 3056.5252 Mhz.
.....host bus clock speed is 0.0000 Mhz
cpu: 0, clocks: 0,slice: 0

Anyways the boot just halts

Thanks for any ideas and help

Dell inspiron 5150 laptop