The POST (power on self test) can be disabled in the BIOS. If you are going to have a dedicated swop file partition, it needs to be at least 4 x the system RAM, 128X4=512, and I would say that is the bare minimum, and it needs to be regularly maintained, cleaned up and defragged. Don't know much about ME and due to adverse reports stuck with 98SE. You may need a decent dual boot manager as the boot disk doesn't seem to be doing it for you. Does the Linux OS come with one.