Hi guys,

I have recently joined this forum and I am a sort of a newbie to Linux. A few days back I had installed Red hat Linux 7.2 in dual boot with Win XP on my Toshiba laptop. I used Grub as boot loader and wrote it to MBR.

Yesterday I was trying to log into Linux and it gave a sys file error message. It asked me to enter the root password or use ctrl-d to reboot. I entered the root password and then got the command line. I had no idea what to do then so I used the command " shutdown -h now". The sys came to a halt and then I used the power button to turn it off.

The next time when I turned the sys. , there is no disk activity and a blank screen appears. The sys. is powered on and is running on AC power. It appears as if the sys is still in halt mode. I tried all key sequences and there is no effect. It appears as the keyboard is also dead since the LED for caps lock does not glow when i press it.

I cannot even get into the BIOS to change the boot sequence to CDROM and do not have a floppy drive either. Please help me out guys.

Regards,

Manhar.

Was the machine working (windows or linux) after installing linux, even for a while, or did it die on the first boot after installing grub?

Turn off, unplug, remove battery, leave for 10, replace battery, turn on?

If you can't even see the power on self test (BIOS) then this sounds like a hardware problem to me...

Dear Steve,

Today morning after psoting the question I did the remove the battery and replaced it and it started working.

Ny idea why did this work. I know I am going out of the topic of this forum but still just curious.

Thanx a lot nyways.

Regards,

Manhar.

Could it be that your laptop (BTW which model are you using) is going into a power-saving "hibernate" mode? My laptop (IBM T40) will do that, and pressing the power button will wake it back up. This may be a shot in the dark but it's the first thing that crossed my mind after reading your description. Your user manual should have more info about this function (assuming it exists) -- J.W.