After struggling for a couple of days to get Fedora Core 4 set up to dual boot w/ Windows XP, I finally succeeded, but only after booting interactively the first time and answering N to both bluetooth and firstboot. Gnome then launched successfully for the first time.

After twiddling the services, everything or mostly everything is fine. I can get to the internet, run the apps, create new user accounts, etc. However, I wonder what I'm missing because of not running firstboot.

If I enable firstboot in services and then reboot, the system hangs after initializing the services, when it gets to firstboot. Gray screen, mouse pointer, nothing else.

Is there a way to fix / debug firstboot's behavior? Does it matter if I can't?

not real sure what u mean by first boot is that in grub order?

Firstboot lets you configure users, install extra packages if you want, test the soundcard etc. You can do the same things in the command line or using other graphical tools, so in my personal opinion its not really necessary.

boxerboy- firstboot is a process launched the first time you boot fedora after installation (and every time after that until it runs successfully). I'm a Linux newbie, so I don't know if it's Fedora-specific or a standard Linux process.

Firstboot is Redhat/Fedora specifc (and derivatives of course). Its not necessary and you can deselect it during installation.