I have an old Windows XP box that I’ve tried loading Linux on but without any luck so far. I set the bios to boot off the dvd drive but no joy. It brings up a Linux splash screen but that’s as far as I can get. Sucks being a novice.
Which distro are you using? From experience, I can tell you the easiest distro to use coming from a Windoze background is PCLinuxOS. Go here:
http://www.pclinuxos.com/get-pclinuxos/
Get the KDE version if your box can handle it. Otherwise go with the LXDE version if your old box is really old.
Try it and post again if you have problems.
Your freezing on the splash screen might have to do with the distro needing a PAE enabled box. If your box has PAE, enable it in the bios. Otherwise, try PCLinuxOS. I don’t recall ever have PAE issues with that distro.
Good luck. Switched to Linux almost four years ago. Use nothing but now, except for at work....
P.S. Regarding the splash screen freeze, I forgot to mention, if your box is really old, it might be only a 32-bit machine. So whatever distro you’re trying to install, make sure you downloaded the 32-bit version (if it has one).