Hello all,
I have a desktop - Intel 1.8Ghz, 512 MB RAM, 40 GB hardisk. The computer is 6 years old but the motherboard was replaced 4 months back. The computer had Windows XP and FC8 dual boot. Around a year back, the XP partition became badly infected by viruses and would not boot. As all my work in this computer is in Linux, I didn't reinstall XP. Now the story begins.

On Friday, when I tried to boot into FC8, I got the message "Kernel panic - not syncing: Attempted to kill an idle task!". Some part of the call trace is:

I tried to install FC8 again and the installation started and stopped with an error similar to the one above.

I then tried to install Windows XP again. I formatted the old XP partition and tried a fresh installation and got this error:

So then I tried Ubuntu 8.04 Live CD. When I booted into it, the GUI with options was hardly visible. I chose "Try without installing". I got the choose languages screen which I could hardly even see. After that I got the same error as the FC8 installed and boot error.


My questions:
1. Could the problem be in the hard disk? Its 6 yrs old and in a dust prone environment (in an experimental lab) and could have gone bad.
2. Could the problem be in the processor? Again 6 yrs old.
3. Could the problem be in the motherboard (BIOS etc) even though this is a new motherboard only 4 months old.

I could take this hard disk out and plug it into another computer and try to install stuff there. If all goes OK, it could be a motherboard or CPU problem.

Thanks in advance.

Here's what I think it is: I think you edited /boot/grub/menu.lst, in an x terminal, and when you saved it the kernel line got wrapped . So if you get to the grub screen, hit 'e', and look. All of the lines should begin with title, root(hd0,0) or some similar looking thing, kernel, initrd, savedefault. If one of the lines got wrapped in an editor, the boot won't work. It should be obvious.

If not, you can boot with the F8 install CD/DVD, and reinstall grub using the rescue system. The rescue system should chroot you to the hdd installation, where you can run whatever program installs grub in F8. It should tell you, because it's a common problem.

Thanks for the suggestion.

When I was reinstalling XP, I formatted my first partition. So I don't have a boot loader currently. I used the FC8 DVD to try to rescue the system. It just would not boot. The initial splash screen with the option "Install", "Rescue" etc does not appear clearly. When I try to choose Rescue using the arrow keys, the GUI begins to break up, then freezes and I need to do a reboot.

Any suggestions?

Thanks in advance.

I understood the problem. There were two RAM cards out of which one was defective. This was causing all the GUI crashing/freezing/breaking problem.

Thanks AwesomeMachine for your quick suggestion.