I upgraded Fedora Core 5 from kernel 2.6.17-1.2174_FC5 to 2.6.17-1.2187_FC5. When I reboot it still loads the older kernel. How can I change this so It loads the new kernel?

Somewhere in your system configuration menu (might be System Settings?)there's a "Bootloader" configurator. You can use that to change the default kernel. I used Fedora Core 4 a little over half a year ago and that's how I got the job done.

Change the configuation settings in /etc/grub.conf (assuming you are using GRUB bootloader)
change
default=0 to default=1 (if the second kernel is listed after the 74 kernel)
put # infront of hiddenmenu so that you can select kernel to boot at startup

Ok, before editing can you take a look at my etc/grub.conf file posted below. I'm not seeing the default path to the new kernel.

______

Bob

# grub.conf generated by anaconda
#
# Note that you do not have to rerun grub after making changes to this file
# NOTICE: You do not have a /boot partition. This means that
# all kernel and initrd paths are relative to /, eg.
# root (hd0,5)
# kernel /boot/vmlinuz-version ro root=/dev/sda6
# initrd /boot/initrd-version.img
#boot=/dev/sda
default=4
timeout=5
splashimage=(hd0,5)/boot/grub/splash.xpm.gz
#hiddenmenu
title Fedora Core (2.6.17-1.2187_FC5smp)
root (hd0,5)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.17-1.2187_FC5smp ro root=LABEL=/
initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.17-1.2187_FC5smp.img
title Fedora Core (2.6.17-1.2187_FC5)
root (hd0,5)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.17-1.2187_FC5 ro root=LABEL=/
initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.17-1.2187_FC5.img
title Fedora Core (2.6.17-1.2174_FC5)
root (hd0,5)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.17-1.2174_FC5 ro root=LABEL=/
initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.17-1.2174_FC5.img
title Fedora Core (2.6.17-1.2157_FC5smp)
root (hd0,5)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.17-1.2157_FC5smp ro root=LABEL=/
initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.17-1.2157_FC5smp.img
title Windows
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
chainloader +1

Every line starting with "title" signifies a kernel or OS in which you can boot into.
If you want to boot into 2.6.17-1.2187_FC5 kernel put default=1, the first title is 0,second 1 and so on.
After booting, on terminal you can type "uname -r" to get the version of kernel