Yesterday I installed Fedora 12 using a Fedora live image CD, which I downloaded from the Fedora site. The machine is Dell Precision 670, 4GB of RAM, 70GB HD.
I went through all the steps outlined on the Fedora site, and rebooted the machine.
After reboot, the fedora icon comes up, and after about 10 minutes I see the following message on black screen:

mount: you must specify the filesystem type
dracut: FATAL: Failed to mount block device of live image
dracut: Refusing to continue

No Root device found

Boot has failed, sleeping forever.

If anyone has any suggestions, it would be highly appreciated. Should I try reinstalling from scratch?

Yes.

Looks like dracut is unknown to me.

See if anything on this link helps. http://www.harald-hoyer.de/personal/...osdem-2010.pdf

FYI - dracut is a replacement for intramfs.
Sounds like your cd/iso is not working correctly, did you verify after download? Also, the DVD install allows for greater flexibility during install. Your better off trying to install from DVD. If your just using Live CD to look at Fedora, verify it was downloaded correctly and reburn the CD.

Thanks for the feedback. Instead of the Fedora Live CD, I have downloaded the 5 .iso CD images. I downloaded the images from the Argonne National Labs FTP site, burned the 1st CD. I tested the CD during the Fedora installation and the test failed. I tried this on 3 different CDs, same issue. I have now downloaded the .iso CD images from another site, Virginia Tech, and I'm having the same issue.

Could there be a problem with the CD drive? Should I try the installation even though the disk failed the test?

It might be a problem with your drive, or your cd media. Try burning the discs at a lower speed. I wouldn't install from a disc that fails to verify itself, unless I was looking for some....excitement

Use checksum/shal tests on the iso's. Maybe downloads are failing or the current system has faults in hardware or software.

I agree to always burn disks at the slowest speed possible and use good quality disks.

Just in case it can help somebody googling in similar case.

I got the same problem with F14 DVD Live Image on an older machine. Checked several drives and DVD copies. Strangely, some CDs (e.g. System Rescue CD) were working. What finally DID HELP was ... changing IDE cable!