A tale of woe getting RH to work - help!
 

Before I start, i should say that this computer works no problems with Win XP, and my linux CD's work no problems with other pc's

I got this pc about 6 months ago, and immediately tried to install linux.... well to cut a long story short i had massive problems getting to even run the installer, but last night i eventually got it to run the RH installer, as long as it was only in text mode. (Installed exited abnormally when graphical mode used).

Anyway, after installing Fedora 1, i thought all would be well.... oh no!

First problem - it would appear the installer didnt correctly write the boot partiton, so i have to use a floppy.... no problem i thought - get into linux and re-write it... well...

I put the floppy in the drive and booted - fedora then booted, and got the the "first boot" "welcome to fedora" bit... and promptly crashed.

I restarted the pc, and it booted, started the x-interface for the loading system services bit, then dropped back to console as the hd didnt correctly unmount. It then checked the hd, and everything was ok, but there were a few insmod probs, then it got to loading the ohci1394 firewire thing, said OK, then crashed (the next thing should have been entering run level 5)

I ctrl-alt-del'ed it, and it did shut its self down ok... so i restarted, and went into interactive mode, and it went fine, and i started all the services except first boot, as that was what had caused a problem before... fine - got to the nice x-windows fedora login screen, logged in as root (as i hadnt been able to set up any other users as the firstboot thin crashed) then it froze... again.

I restarted yet again, and accidentally got back to the first boot screen, which hung again.

I rebooted again, planning to get to the login screen and tell it to goto failsafe terminal, not gnome, I clicked the little system icon, got the list of logins, clicked failsafe terminal..... and it crashed :mad:

I put the fedora cd back into the drive, to go into rescue mode, and it gave me a shell..... then it kernal panicked, and crashed.

By this point i was getting really annoyed, and i put the RH8 cd's in, planning to install that instead, as it has less graphical parts to go wrong, but that.... crashed before it even got to the media test!!!

What on earth could be making linux so unstable, yet XP runs so well :confused: :confused:

My system is:
MSI Neo2 865PE mobo
P4 2.8
ATi Radeon 9800pro 128
1Gb Crucial RAM
Western Digital 120Gb (non s-ata) hdd
sony cd & sony dvd drives
Sound blaster Audigy

Thanks for reading, and sorry it is so long :(

does it give you any crash messages, or is it just one of those annoying not-doing-anything crashes that made me give up windows in the first place? :P

no crash messages, it just hangs

Sometimes it responds to ctrl-alt-delete, sometimes it only responds to the power cord being yanked out :(

Maybe i should add, the Knoppix live cd, which i tried in desperation a while back works fine, with absolutely no problems

would trying KDE help this as it is a different display manager?

Prolly not.

This sounds a lot like a problem that I had with a system sometime back. Same deal with the Knoppix live too.

If you haven't already done so, set your BIOS "PnP OS Installed" field to "No" or whatever indicates that the installed Operating System is not PnP capable.

GIve yourself at least a 64MB AGP aperture.

Make sure the machine isn't overclocked in any respect.

Try the install again.

If it still bails on you, dump the ATi-chipset video card and go with something else.
In my situation, I dumped the ATi card and went with an Evans & Sutherland graphics adapter and the install went as smooth as silk.

Unfortunately i cannot find any reference to a "plug and play" os in my bios :( Is there a known problem with ATi? even tho it detects the card correctly ?

Thanks for the suggestion :)