thanks kirol i'll try your suggestion and see if i can get anywhere ...

harry ... ive tried installing debian stable ... net-install it gets past the first section i think up to 100% takes for ever to get past some IDE modules loading stage at 84% but it eventually gets to 100% then all i get is a blue screen with while bar allong the bottom, i can type stuff in on the keyboard, but nothing happens

drive is NTFS just now (as is the other c drive) its only got 1 partition ... and im pretty sure ive set up the master slave thing ... checked it a few times