Hi all,

I am new to this forum, so please be gentle, my soft outer shell hasn't harden yet....

I have tried to install Fedora 2 on a Dell Optiplex GX-280 mini-tower. It has a P4 processor-2.8Ghz, 3.0 Gigs of Ram and a 250 Gig West. Dig harddrive.
the Mouse is a universal serial bus, 2BTN, wheel, Entry from PRIMAX ELECTRONICS LTD. The keyboard is a 104, Universal serial bus LITEON series. Dvd, floppy and no serial ports whatsoever, all usb!

Problem:
when I tried to install FC2, the following happens:

The install started up and only promted me for lanuage, keyboard by lanuage, and then jumped straight into setting up partitions. Install went fine, but upond reboot, as soon as I got the first Fedora splash screen, both mouse and keyboard cease to function, that is, they both freeze up!

The FC2 OS continues to boot up but then at some point during this, Kudzu decides to pop in and tries to configure "unknown devices". It waits for user input to proceed with configuration which I can't do because THA' FRIGIN KEYBOARD IS FROZEN!!, and then it times out and continues to boot up; bringing the system up to the post FC2 install screen which "wants you to do a few more things before the installation is complete" which I can't do because THA' FRIGIN KEYBOARD.....AND MOUSE......ARE FROZEN!!!, and there it sits.......

What I have tried so far:

*Booting into first\single user mode under linux rescue and edited the /etc/modprobe.conf file so the the two lines,

alias usb-controller ehci-hcd
alias usb-controller1 uhci-hcd

are swicthed
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*Updated the BIOS on the Optiplex GX280 so that it is current

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*Re-installed FC2....to no avail.

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*Tried running Kudzu in rescue mode.....nope.

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*Unpluged the mouse so as to force the system to allow for reconfigure
of a new mouse.......no luck here either.
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*Tried a different usb mouse...Na-Ah!, nadda!, zilch!

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I hvae been looking through the forums here and have seen some things
pretaining to X, could some one get me a bit more on this as to what to look for and do?


I could swear that I heard the system fan on this maniacal machine go

YUUUUUUU SSAAAAAAAAAK HAAAAAAAAAAAA................

Please help me as I am slowly loosing my mind and will probably commit
electronic homicide soon........

I've seen similar USB issues on a GX280 with REL3.
If you have another system available (anything that can run a terminal window, e.g. hyperterm in windows or kermit in unix, etc),
you can set the system to boot with serial console, e.g. add
console=tty0 console=ttyS0,9600n8
to the end of the kernel line in grub. You may also wish to append single to get to single user mode.
LEave keyboard plugged in, but have terminal window connected on other system during boot up. You can respond to the
kudzu question on bootup from the terminal.

I've seen some sporadic keyboard working by just plugging or unplugging another USB keyboard, but not positive if that was real or not.

Still working on getting mouse to work.