Problem installing ubuntu 16.04.5 LTS i386

I am installing from a USB stick. My hardware is intel. Processor is 3Ghz - pentuim 4 with hyper-threading enabled - 2Gb memory and SATA drives. After displaying the initial 2 line text message at the top of the screen about loading the bootmgr???? - a purple screen appears with a image at the bottom. After a while the screen swaps to a flashing cursor in the top left hand corner of the screen and nothing else happens.

I then rebooted the machine and waited for the message to appear and then pressed the F4 and/or F6 function key which then bought up a screen with function keys listed at the bottom of the screen i.e. F1 Help ..... F6. Tried various options as in 'Try Before Installing', etc and got the same result i.e. screen with cursor etc.

I have tried two different images of this software just in case the one image was corrupted.

The hardware is working correctly as I have been running Windows on it - but want a change.