I keep having trouble to install FC3 in SATA HDs and have already submit the bug to bugzilla:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=136995
Could anyone kindly let me know abot any sucessful story of FC3 with SATA HDs ? I wonder to know there would be a "simple" way for that... I know "simple" is not always "simple" but any details of the simplest way would be greatly appreciated.
I had no problems with SATA disks/controlers under Linux, as long as the controler was listed as supported. Those unsupported always worked when set to parallel ATA emulation mode in BIOS.
Just couple of wild guesses, things to try. Maybe it will help, maybe not.
Do you have fake-RAID support enabled in the BIOS by any chance? If yes, disable it. It will not work under Linux, and it is software RAID anyhow (Linux software RAID is usually faster and more reliable than those fake-RAID stuff in BIOS).
You said you were able to install, but system hangs on boot. This is kind of strange. Does Grub load the kernel and initrd and than things hang, or it hangs right after POST before Grub takes over?
If former, try booting from CD into rescue more (type linux rescue on boot prompt), let Anaconda configure network and mount your Fedora installation. When you get shell prompt, chroot /mnt/sysimage, download latest kernel update, rpm -ihv kernel-whatever.rpm, try booting with it. Maybe it will help, maybe not.
If later, check if Grub is installed at all. Try reinstalling it by hand (boot into rescue, chroot /mnt/sysimage, grub-install).
If nothing helps, you can always set SATA controler in BIOS to emulate parallel ATA -- this always works (works even for Red Hat 7.x that does not have any support for SATA).
Oh, one more thing. This is not related to SATA (happens on systems with PATA and/or SCSI too). On some motherboards I hade problems with race condition in init script (the one that loads drivers from initrd image). What exactly do you see on the screen before system hangs? Is it complaining about not able to mount root partition, not able to find any disks, or something like that? Remove "quiet" and "rhgb" options from Grub to see if system is complaining about something like that.
-- Aleksandar Milivojevic <amilivojevic@xxxxxx> Pollard Banknote Limited Systems Administrator 1499 Buffalo Place Tel: (204) 474-2323 ext 276 Winnipeg, MB R3T 1L7
