Fedora 17 yum update prevents system from booting or reinstalling
 

I switched over to Fedora 17 from CentOS 6.3 because I wanted the newer features offered in KDE 4.8 here's my issue(s) (I'll just give the skinny)

General setup:

Computer Specs:
Dell Studio 1749 Laptop
500GB drive
8Gb Memory

* Disk layout (I create):
/dev/sda1 = /boot
/dev/sda2 = / (LUKS encrypted)
/dev/sda3 = swap (12GB)

> Installed via Fedora 17 DvD
> Labeled partitions (boot, root)
> Changed fstab to use disk labels (swap to use /dev/sda3), mounts all worked (after reboot)
> Ran yum update (completed sucessfully)
>> When the system reboots it sits at a GRUB screen (that's all it displays) it's not a GRUB prompt where it's waiting for input, the keyboard is frozen and I'm unable to type in anything.
>> I can run rescue mode from the DvD and chroot /mnt/sysimage
>> Can run grub2-install /dev/sda1 which gives a general warning about ext2 filesystems but it says operation was sucessful
>> Can run grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg which finds the filesystems and completes sucessfully
> When I reboot it sits at the GRUB prompt again with the keyboard frozen
> Ran through the installation again wiping out the entire drive (and letting it do its own auto disk layout for the entire disk)
>> On reboot it still sits at the GRUB prompt

Have you run the bootinfoscript to get details on your system? You can do this from the Fedora Live CD, site below:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/bootinfoscript/

Why do you need 12 GB swap? Do you handle huge computations?

You are having a kernel mode setting issue.
Use a boot parameter to disable it.

I will give it a try; after some additonal research and trial and error (a lot of that) I found something that might explain it. This used to be a Windows 7 machine and I think at one point was using GPT on the drive, I found some posts about old GPT data being stored as a backup at the end of the drive and that not all utilites will get rid of it. I found these steps to try which are next:

start gdisk:
gdisk /dev/sda
Then x to get into the "extra functionality" menu
Then z to zap the GPT information.

I setup the 12Gb swap because I thought it was supposed to be the size of memory plus added space. I forget the formula I found but it was something like 1.2X the amount of memory install in the system. What would you recommend for what is basically a desktop OS running VM Workstation 7?

Swap = 3GB should be more than enough as you have enough RAM.
(It is unlikely to be touched :)

Your main issue may be GPT related.

if its a kernel update then try booting from the previous kernel you can also boot into advanced options and you will get a root prompt then you can try to shut some modules off

Ok after additional research, trail and error it turned out there were some remants of GPT on the drive. At somepoint I must have converted it to GPT and the tool I used to convert the disk back to basic didn't fully work. So I followed this advice:

gdisk /dev/sda
Then x to get into the "extra functionality" menu
Then z to zap the GPT information.

Then:
Installed Windows 7 (for SWTOR)
> A previous Fedora 17 install had left 50Gb at the end of the drive that I installed to

Installed Fedora 17
> /dev/sda1 (1GB boot) - ext3
> /dev/sda2 (root - LUKS) - ext3
> /dev/sda3 (3Gb swap)

Was able to perform yum update with no problems, all is well. Thanks to all for the help.