Then flashes up some more messages which are too fast for me to see (is there a way of slowing this down or scrolling through it afterwards?), then goes into that graphical launcher with the image of a computer.
Remove "rhgb" from your /etc/grub.conf entry to stop it doing that. For example, change:
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.9-1.667 ro root=LABEL=/ rhgb
to:
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.9-1.667 ro root=LABEL=/
Paul.
