Not sure what has happened here. This is far from a new machine or even recently upgraded. I was working away this morning when my mouse pointer stopped pointing. Odd. The light is still on, but no point, no click. I still had keyboard control so I shut down all my applications and closed my session. Still no pointer movement. So I went for a reboot. I get the Lilo menu, and choose the kernel I have used for years 2.6.81_24 (my compile). The progress bar goes about 5/6 of the way across and then sits there. Mocking me.

I reboot and go to the boot command line. Try my failsafe kernel (that I have not needed for years) 29 dots on lilo, new line, and stop.

Reboot again, try my kernel from the command line. 29 dots, stop.

Scratch head.

Pull out Mandriva One 2008 CD that I have been meaning to get to. Reboot, get message about loading kernal, black screen with flashing cursor, stop.

Pull out eduBantu cd that I was looking at to load on an old laptop. Loading kernal, black screen, stop.

Scratch head. Swear. Repeat all of above steps with same results.

Give up. Go on internet to whine and ask for help.

Write post to LinuxQuestions.org.

Looks like some type of hardware failure to me, typical failures or RAM, HDD, PSU. If you can, try to run some diagnostics software on it, like memtest86 for one. I usually recommend this CD:
http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/
as an all-purpose diagnostics utility when this kind of stuff happens.

If you can't run it, then replace the HDD and RAM with ones you might have around as spares, if you don't then take it to the shop and have them look at it.

I am afraid it is something like that. I am hoping it is just a loose/corroded connection, but I would like to know what connections to check.

Also I would love to get a cd to boot so I could at least run fsck before I start tearing into my system.

You hit the nail on the head. Cleaning and reseating the RAM seems to have solved the problem.

Much thanks!

Skip

Cool, that's good to hear. It's unusual that the RAM sticks can get dirty enough not to work anymore, but it's possible. Maybe they were dirty and a bit loose.

I have actually seen it before. It used to be pretty common when contact points of cheap motherboads and memory sticks were of poorly matched metals and would corrode. My motherboard and RAM are high quality (but old) so I was kind of surprised.