I had difficulty installing a package (Sylpheed-Claws), which broke some dependancies for X Windows beyond my ability to repair. So, I did a fresh install of FC5. This time, however, I opted to have grub install not to the MBR but to /dev/hda. This was a critical error on my part, which, I think, led to some serious problems. After the fresh install I ran yum update, useing the anaconda-type interface to install Sylpheed-Claws, which worked very well, better than yum or even yum extender. (Nothing broke.) I then edited /home/hosts and ran "service xinetd restart" and "service network restart", then rebooted. On reboot the screen was filled with "GRUB", at least one hundred times, but not an infinite loop. I rebooted, and got a message about no floppy in drive A, except that there's no floppy drive. There's hda and hdb, plus a CD-ROM and CD-RW, but no floppy. I rebooted again, but am now just getting a blank screen. It took me a bit to recall that this computer used the "del" key to bring up the BIOS settings, I'd been pressing the function keys. When the computer boots now I'm just getting a blank screen, totally black. Disconnecting the monitor gives a message about "no signal", it's not the monitor. I can't get into the BIOS settings, no matter if I press "del" or not. The lights indicate that two CD-ROM drives are being accessed, repeatedly, in a loop, but putting a bootable CD into either drive doesn't result in anything happening. My conjecture is that it's related to grub, as it's a boot problem, and some sort of interplay with the BIOS settings. Is this a hardware problem? I removed the battery for a bit, but that had no result. thanks, Thufir
