I'm getting a failure very early in the boot loader; keyboard locks. The same thing happens with the Rescue CD. Knoppix boots fine. Checksum of CD1 is fine.
Details;
System: Laptop: Dell Latitude CPx.
1. Waited 5 minutes w/o touching the keyboard to see if there was some odd timing issue. Nope. Looks like a hard lock.
2. Function keys (F1...) do not work, and the cursor is flush left on the line just below the [ character in [F1-Main].
3. Keyboard lights do not toggle. (Tried with laptop keyboard plus plugged in both a PS/2 and a USB keyboard. Powered off the machine each time.)
4. The files on both CD 1 and Rescue are fully readable. Under Linux (FC3), running "sha1sum /dev/hdb" with CD 1 in the drive hands back the correct checksum;
6891c664a917bbee2a5e8d685fd8e9797ec1b8ab
5. Knoppix 2.4 and 2.8 boot and the keyboard is fully active. Knoppix 2.8 was burned to the same media as FC4 test1 CD 1.
6. The FC4 rescue CD was burned to a different brand of media just to eliminate that as an issue.
7. The system bios configuration also works.
8. FC3 and a few previous versions of RHL/FCL were installed sucessfully on the same machine previously.
9. The CD lense was cleaned as a last attempt to get it working. No dice.
Note that I do not have a floppy drive on this machine and it is not capable of booting from USB. If someone knows how to kick off a boot using some other method, I'd appreciate it.
I have a similar problem with a Dell Latitude CP. FC3 is successfully installed. When I attempt to update to FC4, both the Install CD and the Rescue CD will freeze while attempting to boot. The text for the initial menus comes up (with the F1 through F5 options), but none of the graphics (splashscreen or Fedora hat). The keyboard is frozen. Can't enter F1 - F5 nor Ctrl-Alt-Del. Must do a hard reboot.
Since these machines don't boot from USB and Fedora doesn't provide a boot.img for floppies, I don't know what to try next.