Issues with booting

[yowhat2002]

I am using the 10.4.4 Patched DVD Install.

 

My laptop that i am installing it onto is a 2ghz P4, 512mb ram and a 30gb hard drive. I believe it also uses an ATI graphics card.

 

The installation runs fine, however after the restart i get a blinking cursor in the corner of the screen. I read after searching that if i leave the disk in OSX will boot which it does, but after a while it comes to a stop when it says "Login window application started". I even get a mouse that can move around but i dont get the login window. Even the funky setup music starts playing! I feel so tantalisingly close yet so far away!

 

I heard you can overcome this problem by pressing F8 and then typing "-x" to boot in safe mode, am i doing this right? Do i need to type anything before the "-x"? Because when i try just typing -x it loads the setup from the cd instead of booting from the hard drive.

 

Please dont reply saying "Use the search function dip{censored}" or anything quite as harsh, ive been searching and battling with this for days now. I heard removing the ATI Kexts or somethinig would help, but i have an ATI card so would this cause more damage?

 

Many thanks, and much appreciation!

 

Charles

 

 

*Edit* Ok i manged to get it to safeboot and got it to login etc. However my finder bar keeps randomly disappearing and reappearing and when i open an application things are flickering about. Anyone know what this is to do with?