Hi guys,
    [/tab]I (rather my friend) figured out a funny solution to the Kernel panic issues with FC4 Disc 1 when you try to install it. I'm sure many of you including yours truly has faced this situation when you boot from the first cd and try to install on a system with a SATA drive. The bootup halts abruptly issuing a Kernel Panic message. I couldn't find any possible explanation for this. A few similar cases have been reported in this thread.

[tab]What was more bewildering was the solution - which one of my friends came upon accidentaly. When you get the first bootup prompt boot: - you're supposed to pick your kernel and/or pass additional bootup parameters right ?? At this prompt, enter any random junk and press enter. The bootloader will try to find that kernel and unable to locate it, it'll issue a second boot prompt similar to the first one. Simply press Enter and BINGO .. It boots.. without a single hitch

    I tried this out on my home system and it worked exactly as my friend told me. Now my request is to anyone facing a similar problem to try this method out and report back whether it worked for them or not. I'd really like to know. Also if anybody comes across any possible explanation of this freakish behaviour

Regards,
m^e

Really nice !
I will test it.

I'll try it the first chance i get... but is it working right? I mean is it working fine after installation?

Yeah working perferctly. Another funny thing - discs 3 & 4 fail on MD5 checksums - but the whole data is intact, i.e. you can install all appz and utilities from them and yet they give md5 checksum error. Funny as hell.

lol, but I dun use FC anyways, I use SuSE 9.3

xboxrulz

Interesting solution, unapplicable to me as I have an IDE HD. As for the discs failing checksum and working perfectly, wish I'd known that. My discs 2 and 3 pass, but I've been trying to download discs 1 and 4 for a little over a week. Sometimes the download stops midway through, when it fully downloaded (twice) it failed, so I got worried and have been trying again.

~Viz

Use a download manager like FlashGet as download it from one of the University based mirrors of FC. That'd do the trick.

Since you said that your discs 3 and 4 did not pass the checksum, if the download is the proper size and all the files appear correctly, may I assume that the discs are okay even if they fail checksum, or should I wait for perfect checksum?

~Viz

Usually the MD5 checksum system is wrong, I don't know why people keep using them.

It's different on different burner and checksum software.

xboxrulz

Usually, from what I've seen after downloading ISO images from the net, you have to check the md5sum in Linux and not in Windows. This is because of the newline character or something. Sometimes, you get a completely different md5sum.

But still, doesn't make sense if the first 2 CDs check ok with the md5sum while the 3rd and 4th don't.