another little issue

greetings. i was given a used but fairly recent (though it still said "ibm" not "lenovo") desktop machine with a 1024x768 lcd, which i thought i would fix up for a disabled neighbor. it has XP on it, but my neighbor used to program in C and so i thought i'd make it a dual-boot machine. it has two 3gHz pentium processors and a batch of memory. it's old enough that i figured i'd put trinity-ubuntu 10.10 on it. i boot from the CD, and i get the usual dab of text messages during boot, but then -- nothing. screen goes and stays dark, in auto-sleep. machine and monitor work fine on windows side, but i can't get trinity to install. i can go ahead and give it to him with windows, but would rather offer both, because he'll like linux better. ideas? -- dep The shortest distance between you and great fingerstyle guitar playing? The new instructional DVDs from Marjorie Thompson, available now at www.MarjorieThompson.com