I'm surprised that no mention of this surfaced, but, "computer crashed while copying files and won't boot" means that you have a hardware compatibility issue. Either an actual hardware problem, or just that the Linux kernel does not like your motherboard.
Linux systems running on compatible hardware just don't ever crash (almost).
Whatever distribution you decide to try next, beat the crap out of the system before you invest any time in configuration, or store any important data on it.
Maybe this is just a kernel version issue, but I would be very uncomfortable using a system on which this happened. I'd try to search google for info about Linux + your motherboard model to see if other people have encountered problems.
Cheers,
jf