I am such newbie it is ridiculous, and I probably shouldn't even be messing around with exotic stuff like Linux. I recently installed Fedora core 2 on an old pc I was thinking about getting rid of, and everything went great. Then, I decided to install a ethernet card and the guy that gave it to me said it was just a matter of popping it in and fireing up the operating system. That is what I did and the boot-up hung up before it even started to see what Fedora was going to do. It stuck in the BIOS system configurations screen and the last line was UPDATING ESCD... that is as far as it would go, so I took out the ethernet card, and I think it hung up one more time, but then it started up again like normal. Now it hangs again at the UPDATING ESCD thingy, and I can do nothing with the machine except admire the pretty white text on the black screen. Can anybody offer me some wisdom? I am not much of a computer geek, and even more of a novice with Linux, so bear with me.

Does not sound like a Linux problem at all to me, since it is not getting past the BIOS checks. So this would happen also if you installed Windows
Not too sure what to do about it though....maybe upgrade the BIOS(download from it's maker). Or maybe there's a some settings in the bios? Maybe try setting to defaults.

Another thing to try might be to put the ethernet card in another expansion slot.

Sorry could not be more help...but one of the above might lead somewhere...it's your only hope!