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Hmm. I recently tried running ubuntu and fedora 10 on a virtual machine, and I quite enjoyed them. I decided to go for it and dual boot my laptop with Ubuntu. It seemed to be going well (the load bar went nice and smoothly), Then it got to the part where it checks the file system, and starts/checks bits. They all came up with [ok] next to them, except for one. "Starting bluetooth" Strange, because I don't have any bluetooth adapters or anything, I don't think I ever used one with this laptop. It's been sitting there displaying this for the past 20 minutes and I don't know what to do. Should I pull the plug and hope for the best? Is there any way to abort the bluetooth bit? If someone could help me asap (as it's still sitting there in it's stuck state) it would be appreciated!

It is possible that the laptop has a bluetooth adapter built into it (a lot do these days). Try going into the BIOS and see if you can turn it off or disable it entirely. As for Windows being FUBAR, it probably is, but I don't think your system has been bricked. Try the above first and then let us know what you found. Also, reboot into a live CD/DVD to be sure the system is otherwise healthy, then reinstall from scratch. You might have to install a new Master Boot Record (MBR) which is the root (boot) sector and partition table of the hard drive. If you do that, the system should not boot directly back to the installation.

Sometimes real fast is almost as good as real time. Remember, Google is your friend!

Just remember, Google is your friend! :-). Debian should handle wired ethernet just fine, but Ubuntu handles wireless better. Someone else can probably help you better than I regarding that. I have installed ndiswrapper'd wireless drivers in the past, but it's generally a pain in the butt, and it's been about 3 years since I last did it. Basically, the important thing is to find out what the chip set is for your wireless adapter. You should be able to determine that from your Windows device manager. Go to Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Computer Management -> Device Manager -> Network adapters. You should find the wireless card there. My says "Dell Wireless 1395 WLAN Mini-Card". Double-clicking on that brings up the Properties page for the card. In the General tab, the manufacturer should be found - mine is Broadcom. In the Details tab there is a long string with seemingly complex stuff. You should see something in the string like "&DEV_4315" which is the device type. So my wireless chip set is a Broadcom 4315. Confused yet? :-) Don't worry, you'll get it working. Anyway, with that information, you should be able to determine if there is a native Linux driver for your adapter (best bet), otherwise you can install the Windows driver/firmware with ndiswrapper, which is a means for Linux to utilize Windows drivers for these sort of devices.

Sometimes real fast is almost as good as real time. Remember, Google is your friend!