Thanks again for the friendly contributions.
John. -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Thanks to all who offered suggestions. Some of the advice was
technically over my head but It looks like the issue is solved in a way
I did not expect. I found a CD rescue disk which I had forgotten about
and never tried to use, thinking it would be technically beyond me. I
ran it out of curiosity and found QTParted. I used it to wipe all
partitions and their contents. Then tried an install of Kubuntu. No
problems. I then ventured into an automatix install. Again no problem. I
have since rebooted it a few times without any difficulty.
