Fresh newbie here, with a problem....

I am attempting a new installation of RH9. The problem I have is this:

Attempted to run setup in graphical mode. Got a warning from my monitor that the refresh was over range. Monitor shuts off to prevent damge. Restarted setup in text mode, all goes well.

Setup completes fine, the x configurator comes up. I select my graphics driver, the correct monitor is already selected, and the sync rates supplied match the book for my monitor.

Reboot and all goes well until "starting first boot" (I think that's the message - something like that anyway.) Then it appears that linux switches to real-mode drivers (screen goes blank momentarily, led on mouse goes off and then back on...) Then I get the same warning from the monitor and it shuts off again.

I re-run setup, and re-do the x configuration. This time, I specify refresh rates that are somewhat less than what my monitor is capable of. Same problem.

I am running a SOYO DRAGON SY-KT400 (Apollo KT 400 chipset), AMD 2800XP, 512 Kingston DDR333, NVidia GeForce FX5200 (8x agp, 128MB), ViewSonic A70-2, etc, etc.

Just a follow-up:
Followed advice given in response to post "monitor out of range", which is to say that once the monitor blanked-out, I hit ctrl-alt-f1. This got me back to the boot-up information, but it is hung at "Starting firstboot: ip_tables: (c) 2000-2002 Netfilter core team"
f2-f6 just show blank screens with a flashing, non-responsive curser.

By the way, fefresh is what happens to refresh at 6:30 in the morning!

Chances are something else is happening further up the line. Are there any errors onscreen that you notice as it tries to boot? (You may want to switch to textmode booting to check this, usually init 3.) Alt-F2 and higher aren't going to work until you have your terminals up and running. (During boot, the reason you have Alt-F1 is because there has to be a stdout, or standard output, meaning your screen. Without stdout, developers would be guessing while programming.)

As for your X setup, it's often helpful to go to the lowest reasonable monitor range and card possible. This might mean starting at SVGA at 800x600 @ 60 hz, then working up (most systems will work fine with that...if that doesn't work, you may have other problems).

Also, if you're using a flatscreen monitor, or something else not CRT-based (LCD), you might run into proprietary hardware problems, or at least different timing issues. I don't have those things, so I can't confirm them, but I've heard they can be problematic.