Fedora 14 Boot Problem (Blinking Cursor)

[LazarusLong]

This problem actually goes back to a Kernel update in Fedora 12 - at least that's when it first occurred.

When starting (or restarting) up this machine (Dell 505 Dual Fed 14/XP), it will stall after the BIOS screen. I don't see the normal 'countdown' grub splash screen, nor can I access the boot menu by pressing esc, space, enter, etc. I was able to get around this problem in during Fedora 12 by using a Ubuntu LiveCD and then selecting 'Boot from First Hard Disk'. This would then take me to the grub boot menu and I could then boot up from there. The behavior is the same now that I installed (I did not upgrade - this is a fresh install) Fedora 14. Strangely, I can't do the same thing with the Fedora 14 LiveCD.

Grub is installed to the MBR (Fedora's default installation option). That's about the only other possibility I can think of. The other option is to install onto /boot. That's about the only other thing I can think to try changing.

I also discovered recently that I can get to the boot menu by pressing 'F12' and selecting 'Internal HDD' from the BIOS screen - F12 is the Boot Options key for the BIOS. This will also take me directly to the Boot Menu.

Grub.conf looks fine. I've done a couple grub-install --rechecks and setups just to make sure, and double checked my partitions. Everything looks good there.

fdisk -l output:
Disk /dev/sda: 60.0 GB, 60011642880 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 7296 cylinders, total 117210240 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x41ab2316

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1              63       96389       48163+  de  Dell Utility
/dev/sda2          128520    66685814    33278647+   7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda3   *    66686976    67710975      512000   83  Linux
/dev/sda4        67710976   117209087    24749056    5  Extended
/dev/sda5        67713024    88193023    10240000   83  Linux
/dev/sda6        88195072    92291071     2048000   82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda7        92293120   117209087    12457984   83  Linux

grub:
[root@uncas /]# cat /boot/grub/grub.conf
# grub.conf generated by anaconda
#
# Note that you do not have to rerun grub after making changes to this file
# NOTICE:  You have a /boot partition.  This means that
#          all kernel and initrd paths are relative to /boot/, eg.
#          root (hd0,2)
#          kernel /vmlinuz-version ro root=/dev/sda5
#          initrd /initrd-[generic-]version.img
#boot=/dev/sda
default=0
timeout=5
splashimage=(hd0,2)/grub/splash.xpm.gz
hiddenmenu
title Fedora (2.6.35.6-45.fc14.i686)
        root (hd0,2)
        kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.35.6-45.fc14.i686 ro root=UUID=31a6f352-40d4-48f9-8482-024069cd5bc7 rd_NO_LUKS rd_NO_LVM rd_NO_MD rd_NO_DM LANG=en_US.UTF-8 SYSFONT=latarcyrheb-sun16 KEYBOARDTYPE=pc KEYTABLE=us rhgb quiet
        initrd /initramfs-2.6.35.6-45.fc14.i686.img
title Other
        rootnoverify (hd0,1)
        chainloader +1
[root@uncas /]#

[root@uncas /]# grub-install --recheck /dev/sda
Probing devices to guess BIOS drives. This may take a long time.
Installation finished. No error reported.
This is the contents of the device map /boot/grub/device.map.
Check if this is correct or not. If any of the lines is incorrect,
fix it and re-run the script `grub-install'.

(fd0)   /dev/fd0
(hd0)   /dev/sda
(hd1)   /dev/sdb

[root@uncas /]# grub
Probing devices to guess BIOS drives. This may take a long time.
    GNU GRUB  version 0.97  (640K lower / 3072K upper memory)
[ Minimal BASH-like line editing is supported.  For the first word, TAB
   lists possible command completions.  Anywhere else TAB lists the possible
   completions of a device/filename.]
grub> root (hd0,2)
root (hd0,2)
 Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0x83
grub> setup (hd0)
setup (hd0)
 Checking if "/boot/grub/stage1" exists... no
 Checking if "/grub/stage1" exists... yes
 Checking if "/grub/stage2" exists... yes
 Checking if "/grub/e2fs_stage1_5" exists... yes
 Running "embed /grub/e2fs_stage1_5 (hd0)"...  26 sectors are embedded.
succeeded
 Running "install /grub/stage1 (hd0) (hd0)1+26 p (hd0,2)/grub/stage2 /grub/grub.conf"... succeeded
Done.
grub>

I've tried other things (reaching at this point) like commenting out hiddenmenu, increasing the timeout, etc.

I've been searching for an answer for awhile now. I'm wondering if perhaps it's just my machine? Maybe the MBR is screwed up in some manner? I would think if that's the case though that I wouldn't have any success at booting into anything.