Using 2.6 kernel still unusably slow

[Christopher Calzonetti]

I posted a question to the mailing list about this a while back, and I 
got a few suggestions, none of which really helped me narrow down the 
problem.

I have since noticed that my console screens (ie CTRL-ALT-F1) have their 
text all garbled, in that there is no recogniseable characters, just 
random bits on the screen.  I noticed this when shutting down the 
machine.  It's not totally random.  All spaces have the same random 
pattern, for example, and the colours are correct (ie. the status of 
stopping of services show up in green or red properly)

Lately, I've looked at trying to just wipe everything clean and 
reinstall.  I downloaded the FC3 DVD image, and burned that to a 
DVD-ROM, booted off of that and did a RAM test, and everything seems 
okay, then started the install.

I got as far as the disk druid screen before I finally gave up.  Just 
running off of the install disk is still insanely slow.  On a whim, I 
tried the RedHat EL3 install disks, and the machine seemed to be running 
SIGNIFICANTLY faster.

I realise that there are quite a few differences between the two install 
processes, but when execution times are an order of magnitude slower 
than they used to be (the bootup process, for example takes me 15 
minutes on a P4 2.8GHz machine with 1G of RAM), there's something 
seriously wrong.

Has no one else run into this problem?
-- 
Christopher Calzonetti, MFCF C&O Software Specialist
     mailto:ccalzone at math.uwaterloo,ca   phone:+1 519 885-1211 x7516