Dumping ME for XP + Linux

[Trevr]

My Fujitsu C6581 came loaded with ME which I hate & is now giving me much grief. Its out of warantee but Fujitsu service had a quick look but failed to sort out problems - they are suggesting clean install. Lots of crashes & I think I've butchered it with sys recovery software. No sound, no USB, no sign of IE, hyperlinks don't work, ....

I'm interested in beginning my Linux education but from what I've seen, a laptop may not be a good place to start. I beleive the best solution for me is a partition with XP on 1 and some space to play with Linux on 2nd.

Getting up & running with my work is priority & this means windows. I intend to back up but what is the next step? Do I load something like System Commander 7 onto my (corrupt?) ME then try to partition? Do I clean install my ME recovery CD 1st? Do I reformat my HD 1st? Can I just pop in the XP CD & get myself a partition later? Should I start with Linux installation CD?

PIII-800, 20GB HD, 256RAM

[mjc]

Actually...I would like to see a HijackThis log, first...(the link is in my sig). Because a number of your problems sound like they could be malware/spyware related.

As far as ig goes, using the XP disk to partition and format is probably the easiest/best way to go.