AMD64 live CD Install

Looking for some help with Live 2.0 for AMD64 CD. I think this'll be long winded, but I'll get to the problems/questions eventually. Figure some background may help. I started with Linux about a year ago and switched to 64 Studio 2.1 i386 a few months back. Struggled a lot with the install (total novice), but eventually got everything to work. Absolutely love it, but my i386 computer is a dinosaur, so I've bought a new off-the-shelf HP. ASUS M2N78-LA mobo AMD Athlon II X4 630 Western Digital 1 terabyte: WD10EADS-65M2B DVD drive: A DH16AAL NVIDIA GeForce 9100 6GB PC3 10600 DDR3 SDRAM USB keyboard and USB mouse Downloaded the AMD64 2.0 Live and AMD 2.1 install. Checksums are fine on both. Plus I get the identical problem using my original i386 Live CD, as well as similar problems using my AntiX Live CD that I started by trip into Linux with. Problem 1: AMD64 (and i386) Live CD brings up the Debian boot screen, but when it gets to the blue "64Studio Press F2 for System Info" screen F2 does nothing and I'm stuck at that screen - orange bar doesn't move. Figured out that if I boot using "live-failsafe" I bypass the blue screen and I can see the system info. I'm guessing this loads without a GUI? Problem 2: Things roll along okay (I assume) until I get stuck in a loop like this: USB 3-2: new low speed USB device using ohci_hcd and address 19 USB 3-2: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice Input: PIXART USB OPTICAL MOUSE as /class/input/input19 Input: USB HID v1.11 Mouse [PIXART USB OPTICAL MOUSE] on usb-000:00:02.0-2 USB 3-2: USB disconnect It starts this loop at around address 3, and I've let it keep going until it reached 51, but at that point I gave up because it goes incredibly slow through the loop. The loop is the same exact lines as above, just replace both "19" in increments of 1. I can't get past this loop, so this is where I'm stuck. With the i386 install on my original computer, I was able to figure everything out by doing a lot of research and trial/error, but I'm stumped with the AMD64 version. My only guesses are the stall at F2 has something to do with not having the correct video driver, and the looping is because it doesn't like the USB mouse. I found something in the 64Studio forums about using PS/2 mouse instead of USB for install - problem is, no PS/2 input on mobo (go figure). I want to use the Live CD before doing any partioning and full install just to make sure things are going to work on this machine. Also, I don't want to wipe out Windows 7 just yet, since then I'd have no OS at all (no plans to use Windows, but the HD is so large it doesn't make sense to delete it). Wow, that's a lot for my first post, but if anyone has any help or suggestions that would be great. Thanks.