I'm putting 10.10 on a friend's Sony PCG-6B1L laptop because bad sectors on its
hard drive brought WinXP to a crawl, and re-install was impossible without a new
hard drive. I've tried the Start-Up Manager and installed help for Splashy
Selection, but that dreaded flower and bat graphic keeps coming up. Is there a
simple way to defeat this?

I've tried turning the boot splash off, shortening the time, and switched it
back. I set it to 1024x768 with 16 color depth from 8-bit. There is no manual
for 10.10 yet, but my 10.04 CD didn't like this laptop. I hate to think of
putting on Mint which is a step backwards from 10.10.

Here's my chance to show off Ubuntu and Linux, since they can't afford a hard
drive now.