Fedora 9 Live CD - HP 2133 Boots but blank screen

[Rick Bilonick]

I am trying to boot an HP 2133 with an external CD/DVD drive (USB). The
bios is set to allow booting from the CD/DVD drive. It goes through the
boot process but eventually gets to a not completely blank screen. The
mouse does not work and there is nothing to click on. I've tested the CD
and booted an Inspiron 2200 from it without problems. I did try playing
around with the boot options and got to a shell but eventually it locked
up too once the blank screen appeared.

When starting to boot, I hit tab and it brings up a long command line I
don't fully (or even minimally) understand. What option(s) can I add or
remove to get into a shell? Not sure why X is having problems.

Rick B.