I am new to Fedora, but I have installed Fedora 9 Live on a usb drive as an alternative to Windows. I used the Persistent Flash Drive creator or whatever it is called. I created it a while ago, and it worked fine. That was on my desktop, but now on an HP Pavilion dv6000 laptop, Fedora boots into a text mode. The initial bootup is the same, but it switches over to a text login screen. I thought I used to log in as root, and I can, but I only access the bash prompt. This would probably not be a problem, but I cannot even use the Windows command prompt. I have no idea what to do, and I need to boot to a gui so I can use Fedora on a Vista laptop. Any advice? Thank you.

what happens if you type:

# gdm

??

I don't know if this is the problem you have, but my HP dv9700 laptop uses a nVidia chip set. Fedora (by policy) will not distribute non-FOSS device drivers, and the FOSS nv drive will not work on the newer nVidia chip sets.

If that's your problem, there are two possible solutions:
1) Edit the /etc/X11/xorg.conf to replace the Driver "nv" line with Driver "vesa". That's a simple EVGA driver that will work (with limited functionality) on almost all video drivers.

2) Download the latest driver fro the nVidia site and run the script to compile and install it.

Those two suggestions can, in fact, be combined: Use (1) to get a (somewhat) working GUI system, and then connect to the nVidia web site and do the download. Then change back to the non-working xorg.conf file, reboot, and run the script. (You can't be using the X-server when you run the nVidia script.)

Notes:
1) To run the script, you'll need the gcc compiler and the kernel-devel packages installed since the nVidia driver must be compiled and installed for a specific kernel. (And you'll need to re-run the script every time the kernel is updated.)
2) You may also have a problem getting you wireless connection to work, so -- since you need to connect to the Internet -- you will probably need to use an Ethernet cable to connect your laptop directly to you local network. (Most DSL or Cable modems have at least one Ethernet port on them for direct connections.)
3) If you prefer a GUI-style interface but you're "stuck" at the command prompt, install the Midnight Commander (mc) application. It's easy to use and quite powerful.

#gdm
--> Text mentioning X server is displayed, but I do not understand any of it. It mentions a slave. Does it mess with the hdd?

If my problem was like yours, PTrenholme, wouldn't I still be able to boot with integrated graphics? I know my desktop has integrated, but it only does as I have not put a card in. I'll see about doing what you said.

you need to post the output of the text please.

can you also post the output of

# cat /var/log/Xorg.0.log

I have no idea what happened. I rebooted right into Fedora 9 and logged in correctly. I may have typed something wrong when it first loaded as this time I typed nothing. ???