It has been over a year since the last time I used linux. My previous experiences were with Slackware 9.0 and 9.1 so I decided to give 10.2 a try on my Sager 5720 laptop. I hit one snag during installation, using the sata.i kernel it hanged at IEEE 1394 detection and I had to restart using the --noieee1394 parameter. After that installation went fine. Upon finalizing installation I selected to use "Hardware Detection" on boot, and installed LILO to the MBR which automatically loaded Windows XP option to boot. However, now when I select Linux at LILO and the system begins to boot, it will hang at the Activate Hardware Detection portion. Is there a way to enter a parameter at LILO to bypass the Hardware Detection?

Activating hardware detection: /etc/rc.d/rc.hotplug start
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Do you have to re-boot or does it continue to boot after a little while?

I gave it about 5 minutes before I decided to reboot. Suppose I will reinstall the boot kernel w/o hardware detection enabled, but if anyone knows the parameter to disable please post.

I turned off the internal wireless card and unplugged usb mouse and still no go on boot. The hard drive indicator light comes on when it gets to this portion of boot and stays on, I left it running for about 15 minutes and nothing happened.

Use the Second Cd, which is a "live cd" and chroot into the installed partition. Then change the permission on the /etc/rc.d/rc.hotplug so that it does not execute. After chroot you could also use pkgtool to run some of the automated scripts. Whichever you feel comfortable with. Then reboot. This will disable hardware detection.