Let me get straight to the point am a colloge student who really need's help with Linux I have alway's used Win XP and i don't have the Disk anymore.I heard that Linux was much easier and better but now i am having problem's with Linux Fedora core 3 with the Grub loader I have been work on this problem for the past 3 day's now, At this point i am ready to toss my PC out the window I can't seem to figure this out, Every time i install and reboot it will say local host login i will put my user name that i set up during the congiguration then it will say password but it wont let me type then it will go to a black screen..... Can some one please help me all i want is for my PC to work. This is the kind of PC I have


Compaq Presario S4000NX
2.4 Ghz Intel Celaron Processor
128 mb DDR SDRam


Hard Drives

40 GB Ultra DMA
616 MB Quantam Lightning
541 Maxtor

Monitor

Dell




Please Help A.S.A.P

At what stage do you end up with the black screen - right after the Bios messages, or after an installation but before anything (e.g. KDE) starts up, or after installation and the first reboot ?

Cheers,

mj

right after it says

local host login: I put in the user name that i set up
password: it wont let me type

then it goes black.

i noticed that somebody else had a problem similar and they said they just had to reset the monitor but i dont know what they mean by that or i would give that a try please help

When typing your password it probably won't show any stars, or respond visibly at all - this is just a typical *nix response to passwords (anybody looking over your shoulder won't even see how many keystrokes have been entered, unless they watch your keyboard). It's most likely that just after you login, the X server is crashing due as it switches to a higher resolution video mode. When the screen goes blank, try pressing CTRL-ALT-DEL - this should hopefully bring you back to the text console. If not, then press CTRL-ALT-F2 (or F3, or F4... to F7 - all are separate, concurrent login terminals) and login as root. Now type and follow the prompts.

Hope this helps.

mj

going to try right now

ok when it did it this time i pressed ctrl-alt-f1 and it came back and is staying on but when i put my username and password or so i think i am it says login incorrect their is no movement on the screen to show that my password is being put in and unless it is something that i have no control of i put in what i beleive is the user name and password is their away to check it or change the

localhost:
password so that it will stop saying login incorrect


this is what it says exactly word for word even placement


Fedora core release 3 (heidelberg)
Kernel 2.6.9-1.667 on an i686


localhost login:
password:

ok i just tryed again and the login attempt work but now it looks like this what do i do?


localhost login: kitland
password:
[kitland@localhost~]$



please help what do i do

Check that you don't have the keyboard lock on, and then if it still doesn't work then try typing your password where it says 'localhost login:' to check that you are typing what you think you're typing (i.e. if your keyboard has been set to some other country code, such as Germany, then you may end up with a few unexpected letters).

Then once you are certain of your password, use the backspace key to delete whatever's on the screen, and type your login name, ENTER, and the password. Ideally, you'll want to log in as root (i.e., use root as the login, and whatever root password you set during the install).

Cheers,

mj

Log in as root:... and follow the prompts.

ok i did that already and all it did was just went back to the black screen again it did not give me any prompts

haha whoops.. both of you posted while i was typing...

Also, what are your hardware specs - particularly if this is for a laptop (rather fickle things, I must say...).

Cheers,

mj

Looks like you're logged into the system in terminal mode. Do a command as follows:
ls -l
and tell us what happened.

it is for a desktop and what do you meant by hardware specs
like what kind of stuff is connected (i.e. printer etc)???

jeez so many posts, i can't type fast enough

post your x server's configuration file. If /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 exists on your computer then post it. Otherwise locate the xorg configuration file (locate xorg) and post it's contents. Maybe mjrich is right in that your resolution is too high.