New installation not booting - blackscreen

[dalolo]

Merry Christmas erveryone!

I am new here and also quite new to Linux overall - i hope someone can help me as I am slowly running out of options due to my limited knowledge...

My situation:

• I have a 7 year old notebook, so far running Windows 7 but due  to ending support in Jan I wanted to look into alternatives and found Linux Lite
  
• The notebook is old but the time I bought it it was quite a decent machine with an Intel Core I5 processor, 8GB RAM, 32GB SSD and 750GB HDD. So it should be a good fit for Linux Lite. See attached SysReport for details.
  
• Booting Live from a USB drive works like a charm!
  
• I wanted to utilize my SSD for fast booting so the idea was: 32GB SSD (complete sda) for / as EXT4; first 16GB of HDD for SWAP; rest 734GB for /home as EXT4
  
• Installation went through just fine but when I reboot and try to boot from sda where the MBR was written, I just get a black screen and within 3 minutes the machine heats up like hell - it won't start up.
  

What I tried so far:

• I thought maybe there's a problem with graphics drivers I chose to be downloaded during installation as they are not available during live boot - so I tried installing without them same behaviour
  
• I thought maybe there's some problem with my SSD - thus I tried just using the 750GB hard drive, defining my two partitions plus SWAP there and create MBR/boot from there same behaviour
  
• I thought maybe my whole idea of partitions and mount points was wrong - so in addition to the try before I let the Linux Lite Installer manage the 750GB HDD - looks like it would only create one partition for / still same behaviour
  
• I thought maybe there's a problem with compatibility to xfce (though that doesn't make much sense, live boot worked - you see I run out of ideas and need your help  :-\ ). Still I tried the same with Bodhi Linux which works with Moksha desktop also same behaviour.
  

Does anyone have a hint for me what I could try next? Any help would be very much appreciated!

Thanks!