I am a newbie. Installed redhat 9, dual boot with Windows 98, as far as I can tell everything was working fine, but I couldn't get my modem to work.

Yesterday I went to a Linux seminar day and took my machine. A very nice man used my monitor, but his keyboard and mouse on my machine. It took him about 30 minutes to sort out my modem.

When I got home I set my machine up and went off to dish up the pasta, when I came back the machine was in kudzu and counting down to 0. In a panic I said ignore to everything and my machine continued to boot.

When it got to the login screen I got no response from the keyboard or mouse.

So I pressed the reset button. The machine now does not boot up, I don't even get the bit that says welcome to Redhat Linux with all the okays down the right hand side.

I get the black screen with the white writing and it gets as far as:-

INIT: version 2.84 booting
INIT: /etc/inittab (1): field too long (max 4 characters)
INIT: /etc/inittab (2): field too long (max 4 characters)
INIT: /etc/inittab (3): field too long (max 4 characters)
INIT: /etc/inittab (4): action field too long
INIT: /etc/inittab (5): field too long (max 4 characters)
INIT: /etc/inittab (6): field too long (max 4 characters)
INIT: /etc/inittab (7): rlevel field too long (max 11 characters)
INIT: /etc/inittab (8): rlevel field too long (max 11 characters)
INIT: /etc/inittab (9): action field too long
INIT: /etc/inittab (10): field too long (max 4 characters)
INIT: /etc/inittab (11): field too long (max 4 characters)

The brackets aren't curved they are square.

At the message below I enter a number,

Enter runlevel: 5
INIT: Entering runlevel:5
INIT: no more processes left in this runlevel

Once I have got the message above the keyboard and mouse are again unresponsive, so I have to reset.

I have tried entering various numbers at the enter runlevel:, I have tried 5,0,1,3. I get the same message above ie, INIT: no more processes left in this runlevel and then I have no response from my keyboard or mouse.

I don't want to reinstall as I will lose all the stuff about the modem. I'm not sure what I have done, but is there some way for me to check that it is picking up my keyboard and mouse?

If you have any ideas, please let me know. Also as I am new be precise about what you want me to do and how I get to the place to do it.

Please let me know if I haven't posted this in the right place. If you need further information to help, please let me know.

Thank you very much in advance.

I have also posted this on the Redhat forum

Regards

Nappy