F9 Installation Challenge

[Craig White]

On Wed, 2008-06-04 at 22:27 +0100, Dave Cross wrote:
> As mentioned in a couple of previous mails to this list, trying to
> upgrade my laptop[1] from F8 to F9 has gone horribly wrong. I'd really
> appreciate any help to fix this.
> 
> I basically have two problems.
> 
> 1/ I can't use any of the Fedora boot media. When I boot with the
> installation DVD I get to the "press enter to install or upgrade
> Fedora" screen, but the keyboard is disabled so I can't press enter.
> I've also tried with the Live CD and the rescue disk, but neither of
> those work either. I've also created a boot USB key, but the BIOS on
> this system doesn't support booting like that. This is a problem I've
> hard with Fedora installation media right back to F7. For the last few
> upgrades I've used "yum upgrade".
> 
> 2/ I then tried to use preupgrade. It all seemed to go ok until the
> end, when I got an error about a missing kernel. On rebooting, grub
> only shows me Windows and the preupgrade options (no standard Linux).
> The preupgrade option doesn't work (errors about missing files).
> Booting into Windows and using Explore2FS shows that a lot (if not
> all) of the kernel rpm seems to be missing.
> 
> 
> So that's the current situation. Most of F9 seems to be installed, but
> I can't boot it. I think it would work if I could boot the rescue disk
> and force an installation of the kernel rpm. But I can't boot the
> rescue disk.
> 
> I've run out of ideas. I really want Fedora on this laptop, but I
> can't think of a way to do it. Any advice that anyone can give me
> would be much appreciated.
> 
> If anyone can give me information that allows me to get F9 installed
> on this laptop then I've got $100 that I'd like to donate to your
> favourite open source project or charity.
----
can you boot the F9 DVD with an external USB keyboard?

Craig