Installation of Fedora 5 failure. Help needed

[David Timms]

sgong at gmu.edu wrote:
...
> I downloaded CD images several times and tried to burn into CD
> several times. Everytime when I do the disk test before installation,
> disk 3 and disk 5 will fail the test.
There is a known problem where the media check will fail on perfectly 
good cd/dvd images. If you  check the sha1sum of each iso with that 
provided on the fedora download site (sha1sum), you can check that you 
have a clean download image.

> I then used DVD image to do the test, and it passed. However, when I
> installed the OS to my computer,
What options did you choose in package selection ?
Can you give an idea of the motherboard/cpu/ graphics adapter you are 
using ?

> after the installation was finished
> and the system reboot, it would halt after I entered the username and
> password to login and before the final desktop showed up.
When it appears halted can you switch to one of the text mode terminals 
using ctrl-alt-f1 to f4 ?
If so, log in and run   top  to see if some process has gone awol (q to 
exit) ?

If can't get to a terminal, touch a key while booting, so that you can 
modify the grub kernel boot line.
Edit the kernel line and remove the rhgb and quiet words. You will now 
see all that is going on behind the scenes (text), and the last few 
lines pasted here will hopefully lead to a solution.

> If I reboot
> it, the system will stop before the login page appear.
Again grub|kernel remove rhgb and quiet. Also, try to start in runlevel 
3 (no GUI); this can help to determine if it is something to do with X.

> I tried both installation DVD and CD for 6+ times, and the phenomenon
> is the same. I wonder if anyone has seen this problem before and how
> to solve it. Or anyone has ever installed it successfully, what was
> his hardware configuration and software package.
Personally installed FC5 on about 6 machines (pentiumII,celeron,amd 
athlon 2600, and more modern intels and AMD's) with between (128 and 1G 
ram), notebook PC's (eg HP omnibook 4150, hp xe2, hp compaq nx9000), 
little to all items selected.

If you reply with the info above, you'll probably find that someone will 
know what is going on :)

DaveT.