can't boot 14.04.3 live

it reads in the cd/dvd and then just sits there.

(dvd bued from iso on 12-20-15).

brief:
I wrecked my SSD and have been ruing win7 for last 3 weeks.
Restored my 3 week old clonezilla to a new ext4 partition (on SSD extended ptn)(where it was before) and used rescatux to try to install grub but it ended with an error. typing this on win....

In there somewhere i tried to boot 14.04.3 live to have it install grub and then maybe restore the clonezilla image on top of it. Tried booting as install 14.04.3, also as live. both just stuck.

Only thing I can think of is it doesn't like the gtx960 I got a week ago and linux hadn't seen it yet.

system is: GA-Z97X-UD3H, i5-4670K [email protected], Corsair H80i V2 liquid, 8GB ram, Ubuntu Unity
14.04.3/Win7, Sammy 250GB SSD, EVGA GTX 960 4GB.

I've been up all night so will not respond to any answers until +8hr from now.
Thanks!