Description of problem: Fedora won't show me the nice graphic menu for booting the livecd in an old pc, the reason given is pretty particular: vesamenu.c32: attempted DOS system call error Other distributions show a graphical grub (I'm supposing it's grub what you use in the boot options screen) just fine. The CD is ok and works since on other pcs it takes me to the nice boot options screen. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): Fedora 8, test3, i686 livecd (and previous versions, at least since 5) How reproducible: Boot Fedora livecd on my old pc :) Actual results: A boot: prompt is offered and you have to type linux (enter) to boot, of course if you have no idea what's "boot:" you are not gonna make it past there. Expected results: Fedora shows the nice graphical boot options menu Additional info: Fedora boots just fine, the problem is just the boot options menu. Check the interweb, it's full of reports of this problem. I would say this is an outstanding but, it's keeping newbies from installing fedora or even trying it (if they have the fedora unfriendly hardware).
How old of a PC is this? And does it have a current BIOS?
While booting, my good ole pc says: AMIBIOS 1999, American Megatrends Release 01/31/2002S Among other things, I bought this computer back in 2002, it wasn't top of the line tech so I can imagine it was 2001 technology or something close (Jan 2002 makes sense reading the bios release date). It's a "PC-CHIPS" mainboard, quite cheap and popular for that time, it features SiS components all around: video, lan, sound, ide. Anything else I can add?
Looking for a new BIOS is probably my first suggestion. Because that's should be new enough to correctly run VESA graphics code in the BIOS
Created attachment 313474 [details] Screenshot
Comment on attachment 313474 [details] Screenshot This is occuring when I try to install F10-Alpha and/or the current Rawhide using either the netinstall.iso or the boot.iso. I am trying to install F10-Alpha/Rawhide into a KVM instance (base system is x86_64 Fedora 9 fresh install). I was able to install/run F8 just fine.
Reassigning to the kvm guys. See the thread at http://marc.info/?l=kvm&m=121639849313140&w=2
So hpa sent a patch for qemu to apparently fix this in July. The last build on F9 was kvm-65-7 which doesn't include the patch. So looks like an updated build would fix this?
I've already sent a build to the update system that should fix the issue. It's https://admin.fedoraproject.org/updates/F9/FEDORA-2008-7437. I believe you can help this getting updated by testing and increasing its karma in case it really works for you too.