Upgrade disaster F16->F17 (planned to go to F18)

[Wade Hampton]

I finally decided to update my main home computer to F18.
It was F16 so I had to use preupgrade to go to F17.  After
several reboots it is up, sort-of, on the F16 kernel.  I have
had the following problems.

1) Preupgrade crashed due to moodle -- removed and update proceeded.

2) After update, I still saw option for update to F17 in Grub and none of
the
     other kernels would boot (other than dracut errors).  I did the F17
update
     again and it seemed to fix Grub.  However....

3) I now have options for:
        3.7.3-101.fc17.x86_64
         -- booting this sends me to a command prompt in dracut
        3.6.11-1.fc16.x86_64
        -- this boots but has issues

I am currently running the mostly-updated system with the F16 kernel
3.6.11-1.fc16.x86_64.   I can not run YUM so I can't even attempt
to try going to F18 (unless I manually get the RPMs...).

Any idea on how I can fix YUM?

     # cat /etc/redhat-release
    Fedora release 17 (Beefy Miracle)

    # yum update
    Loaded plugins: langpacks, presto, refresh-packagekit
    Error: Cannot retrieve metalink for repository: fedora/16/x86_64.
Please verify its path and try again

Any idea how I can fix grub to boot into the F17 kernel?

Should I just punt and load F18 (keeping my partitions /home, /data, etc.)?

I have several other computers I plan on updating this weekend.  I may just
have
to reload each of them....

Thanks,
--
Wade Hampton