Intel E5200 dual-core processor, 4 GB RAM,
one 2 TB disk, with GRUB2 boot to
Fedora 20/Fedora Rescue/Windows Vista

I was on Fedora 14, but my disks crashed.
Most of my stuff was on FAT32 and NTFS partitions,
and they were rescued on to a new 2 TB disk.
Five days ago (after some struggling) I installed
Fedora 20 in a 512 GB non-LVM partition,
with no swap. I've been running Fedora 20
for five days, but today 2014-03-13 the system
was hanging, with the disk activity light
constantly on, and VERY slow response.
I power-cycled my PC but the Fedora 20
start-up hung, in various places,
mostly on [ OK ] Starting System Logging Service
or [ OK ] Started Login Service
I tried some four times, eventually I tried to
boot up Fedora Rescue, but with the same outcome.
I powered the PC down for two hours (to "cool off"),
but that didn't help. I've now started up
Window Vista (and I'm using Cygwin).

Where do I go from here? Can the boot-up be interrupted?
(Control-C certainly did nothing.)
Since the disk is new, it's unlikely it is the problem.
One thing, I just though of: there may be a later,
more stable version of the Kernel and related software,
so maybe I should re-install Fedora 20, and immediately
afterwards download all updates. (Any thoughts?...)
I also have Fedora 17 and Fedora 19 on DVDs.
Should I "revert" to one of those? And, how
stable are they?

Any suggestions are most welcome..

F20 seems to have been very stable for me. At one point I was having issues with a kernel from F20 or F21 (Rawhide; don't recall which kernel it was) locking up on me in X, but no problems recently either with F20 or Rawhide. Last time I had problems with a very slow hard drive, the problem occurred with multiple distros, and the solution was to replace the drive.

First thing I'd try is booting from the live DVD and running a non-destructive diagnostic on your disk. If the disk appears to be good, you might try (while still running from the live DVD manually downloading the current F20 kernel and installing it onto your hard drive's Fedora partition.

1 members found this post helpful.

(Sorry for the delay in replying; I had to get going with
other matters - using Windows Vista with Cygwin.)
Thank you for your suggestions. I will try out when I get
the time, hopefully already this week. - The following
is not just for you (RockDoctor), but for anyone who
might read this thread.

Some more info from this morning. I tried to boot up
F20 and Fedore rescue again, with the same outcome, i.e.
I hit F9 in order to see the output from the start-up scripts.
This time the system hung on " Starting Authorization Manager",
or on "[ OK ] Started NTP client/service", so it seems arbitrary.
But at that point I was able to login in character mode via
Alt-Ctrl-F2. I looked at what files had changed this morning,
and there were a few in "/var" (notably "/var/log/messages"
and "/var/audit/audit.log"), but I could not see anything
important. (Both files are HUGE!) What should I look for?
- I commented out the mounting of FAT32/NTFS file systems
in "/etc/fstab", re-booted, but it made no difference.

Sorry for the delay, but I've been battling with F20.
At any rate, I guess I did something wrong when I
used the F20 install DVD again. I chose "test media",
expecting to be asked about testing my hard disk afterwards,
but Anaconda just proceeded with re-installing F20.
Immediately after the install I did a full update,
and I've been doing regular updates, and I'm now
on the fourth kernel. (From 3.11.10-301.fc20.x86_64 on
the DVD to 3.13.6-200.fc20.x86_64, then 3.13.7-200.fc20.x86_64
and now on 3.13.9-200.fc20.x86_64.) I've had a
few unexplained GNOME hangs, though. I.e. the mouse
pointer moves but no other response, but I can
to a character mode login via Alt-Ctrl-F2, and when
I deem it safe I do "reboot".
- I've been planning to try to do a non-destructive
diagnostic of my HD as you suggested, but I don't see
myself to find the time.
(I've marked this thread as "SOLVED".)