Quote Originally Posted by Stephen
Have you tried just failsafe at the boot: prompt it will boot with minimal hardware checking.
Failsafe does not work. In the meantime I did manage to get an installation of Mandrake 9.1 working by disabling apm & hlt during the setup process (linux apm=off no-hlt).

From the research I have done so far it seems that most PCG-F series laptops are plagued with this problem and it is not just Sony which lies at fault - it seems that the processors used by Intel are defective. More info here: http://pub173.ezboard.com/funofficia...icID=818.topic