ChattChitto

Fabulous!

I'm up and running again on my newly formatted ex-Windows 8.1/10 machine..........

Thanks to Linux 17.2 Mint Rafaela, and I am really impressed!

Every thing is working again, apart from the Bluetooth card and to be honest, I couldnt really give a squat.

Hooray!

Loving the experience, even though it has been a steep learning curve. Although, I am sure there will be more fun in store.

Good man! Please keep us up to date on your findings and experiences! I presume 64-bit?

Great to see you finally happy after all your troubles Möbius
Keep us posted on how you get on with Mint Rafaela , I'd be interested to know

Was it a lot of work? Did you format then install or simply install? Can or, could you please tell me (us) a little of what went into your new OS install? Thanks for the post

Great news indeed...

In reply to OTL's Q; Yes, 64bit!

And Monday........Yes, it was quite easy to install.

In bios I changed Boot Order to USB stick, then............

I used a partitioning tool PMAGIC, an ISO image which I downloaded elsewhere , and I had to eventually use a Linux Bootable Pendrive Creator to house the image.

Basically, go to bios and deactivate the Secure boot then change the options in Uefi settings to Legacy.
Once that was done, I erased all the data on the HD by deleting all the partitions which left one huge chunk "Unallocated"

Rebooted and two minutes later I was running Linux. (With a working DVD-RW too, BONUS!!!!!!!)

Easy, but nerve racking.

I'll elaborate on this later and let you know what I have done so far, in another post.

Dinner time now