Laptops :: Trouble booting a Sony Vaio pcg-fx120

Hello, Everyone!

My uncle gave me his old Vaio laptop, which will run windows xp, but when I try to boot DSL, it lock after displaying something like "loading linux kernel... ok", even when using the failsafe boot option. I am quiet a novice, and don't know what to try beyond this. Any help would much appreciated, thank you.

I should say, it also has a bad ram slot.

original here.