Nothing is ever guaranteed. Any OS can result in installation problems,
including Windows. Dual booting is not easy. It can be very time consuming and
can take some fiddling, especially with Vista. It works better with XP. There is
good news and bad news.

The good news is that you had the nerve to try and got some favorable results.
The bad news is that it did not work the first time. Many of us have tried many
times before we got the technique down.

The first thing to do before you install is to find out whether Ubuntu works in
the first place with your computer. Unlike Windows Ubuntu is a relatively short
installation. I would install Ubuntu first with the intent of wiping it out,
just to see if it works. Since your system won't work anyway you have little to
lose but the time involved. If the Ubuntu installation hangs then troubleshoot
that as a learning exercise.

A blinking cursor can mean many things. It likely means that there is a setting
or piece of hardware that is improperly detected. Linux is modular. As the boot
process proceeds it loads servers and processes in sequence. When it detects a
problem the system will stall until it is resolved. It could be a drive, video,
dma, acpi, almost anything. The trick is to get a text readout called verbose as
it loads rather than the GUI screen, called quiet. This will give you a better
idea so that you can change the settings. One of the ways to do this is to use
the alternative installation CD. Another is to change the boot parameters so
that it is not quiet which is the default setting.

As far as I know there is no longer a hotkey to use as the graphical screen is
displayed to switch to verbose. There used to be, but users demanded a graphical
screen like Windows that looks more professional. Many distros allow the Esc key
or F1 to show verbose messages. Somewhere along the line the baby was thrown out
with the bathwater and this was taken out of Ubuntu. There is a suggestion on
Brainstorm to bring back the hotkey.

This is how to edit grub to get it verbose:ubuntumagnet.com/.../verbose-startup-and-shutdown-screens-ubuntuThere is also a link that suggests that this speeds up booting significantly, if
you can put up with scrolling text instead of graphics and a progress bar. The
link is:ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php+bootSee also:ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=416604Since you can't boot, it means that you will have to do this from the Live CD.
The only difference with the instructions is that you will have to navigate to
your Ubuntu installation and look for the /boot/grub folder to find menu.lst.

This will not solve your problem, but will give you an idea what the problem is.
Once you know that then you can change the boot parameters is grub or fix
xorg.conf, etc.

If all else fails, try installing Windows using the whole drive and install
Ubuntu using Wubi. This will enable you to work with Windows and installing
Ubuntu will not affect Windows because there is no partitioning and the Windows
bootloader is used, with Windows being the default. Nothing is simpler. Even if
Ubuntu won't install you can do it over and over until you get it right and
Windows will still boot.