Fedora won't boot successfully after installation

[Jeff Vian]

Stefan Frank wrote:

>
>
> Jeff Vian wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> Stefan Frank wrote:
>>
>
>>>
>>> When booting from the installation CD, already, i get the message
>>>         unable to read partition table
>>
>>
>>
>> This is your first clue you are in trouble.
>>
>> Repartition the drive ---  force it to do that.
>>
>
> I zeroed the master boot record (dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda bs=512 
> count=1) and wrote a new empty partition table. fdisk gives me the 
> warning
>
>     invalid flag 0x0000 of partition table 4 will be corrected by write
>
> After writing two new linux partitions, the results are the same as 
> before. Linux can't properly read the partition table and can't mount 
> the filesystems, and the system doesn't boot after installation. With 
> an empty partition table, anaconda exits.
>
> Do you have any ideas?

check your bios settings for the hard drive support.
Confirm the drive parameters are correct, the controller is set 
correctly, and possibly the s.m.a.r.t. setting for the hard drive.   
Also check to see if lba is enabled or not.  Sometimes things that work 
perfectly (or  faults are munged/ hidden) will not work under linux.

Using fdisk at the command line allows you to set/display the partition 
type.  83 for default linux,  82 for swap.  Is that set correctly for 
the filesystem you are using?

If you boot to knoppix, can you see the drive correctly? and can you 
mount it on another running system (knoppix works for this)?
What size drive is it.?  mke2fs allows you to do a bad block check 
during format, as does e2fsck.  Try that as well.