problem booting past first screen

[Markus]

mine has not started past this point after about a dozen attempts. the moniter clicks and the message "out of range 60.0khz 75.0hz" floats around the screen. can anyone help?

Try some cheat codes like xmodule=??? vsync=60, substitute ??? for ati, i810 or whatever you have and set the vsync to what you monitor supports if 60 doesn't work.