Afternoon folks,

New to the forum and new to linux. I have enrolled myself to complete RHCE certification. For this very reason i purchased a HP Pavilion 15 laptop ($$$ hurts).
Config is as below : Intel i5 4th gen processor / 4 gigs ram / 500 gigs hd/ 1gb ati Radeon graphics card/ came with Ubuntu 12.04 pre-installed / secureboot disabled /UEFI enabled

Installation medai : Rhel 6.4 / 64 bit / RHN active evaluation subscription for 30 days.

I am trying to give as much details in here as possible, so that it would help you to help me

I have to mention a couple of issues here. First one would be the freeze issues.
Once the RHEL installation is complete, i get the reboot prompt. When i did click reboot it says the anaconda process is terminated. That’s where it stops. At that point i would have no access to keyboard to try key combinations. The only option i would get is to do a hard reboot. It does boot into the OS after hard reboot and i have no particular problems using it. But once i issue a reboot/ shutdown / logoff, from either cli / gui mode it just displays the broadcast message that the laptop is shutting down now! along with time and date and it freezes. No keyboard or touchpad response. It brings me back to the vicious loop of hard reboot.

The above is when i have the whole hard disk for rhel alone. If dual booting, that’s a total different story. I tried installed win 8.1 & then installed rhel 6.4 to see if the freeze issues would be fixed. Now i can’t even get into linux. It boots directly into windows. No grub, no option to choose the OS. My disk is GPT labeled and the installation of rhel was done using uefi (Created /boot/efi while installing the linux). I have been at it for the past two weeks trying all sorts of combinations. No other version of RHEL is happy enough to completely install on my laptop, they would fail after I select the repositories to install or it would fail during the package installation. I am on the verge of giving up and installing a free rhel type distro. I have read online about iRrefind and other stuff but none of 'em worked in my case. My laptop is as stubborn as a mule and loyal to that window 8.1.

I hope someone in this forum has a way to get this sorted and get me on the bandwagon to become an RHCE.

you are aware that rhel and laptops do not mix well
rhel is a server class OS ( great on a hp blade ) but is missing a lot of things that you need on a laptop
like wireless and bluetooth and support for some cpu/gpu combo chips
and has issues with the mess Microsoft made with "secure boot" on laptops

with Ubuntu installed the MS secure boot is not much of a issue

Ubuntu HAS a ton of laptop support RHEL DOSE NOT
Ubuntu is targeted to the home user
RHEL is targeted to the server and IT dept to support in the office ( on desktop installs)

win8.1 needs "secure boot" turned ON
linux CAN BOT boot because MICROSOFT IS BLOCKING IT and preventing it from running ( secure boot is assuming that Linux is a VIRUS and BAD for you)
turn OFF secure boot
reboot
and boot into rhel

then turn it back on
reboot
reboot into win 8
to get back into rhel
disable secureboot
reboot
boot into rhel

you ARE going to buy the required license from RedHat
so you might want to use that paid for tech support

it looks like you NEED to install the proprietary ATI driver at time of install

contact RHEL tech support