Red Hat Linux 8.0 Loading Failure? + Many other Problems!

I had installed Red Hat Linux 8.0 on my system with 2 partitions..

I installed the Linux by choosing the Option of paritioning of hard-disk on the Installer's behalf.. !..and Also My installation was with GNOM..not text based.

The Red Hat Linux 8.0 got installed sucessfully, and I was happy to install the Linux for the first time.. I Logged in successfully, used some programmes..and..What happened that A programe got stucked..and I had no option to forcefully restart the system by hitting the Restart button..

But when the system restarted and It displayed the graphical screen which appears just before the Login screen.. the System got stucked there in a way that it.. flicks the screen after few secs but was unable to proceed...

After I waited for some time it showed me a message telling me about the failure..of Loading

So.. How will I be able to overcome this Problem...?
Pluse..give a hint to save my data as well on the D Partition of the hd..as linux didn't touched that and left that the same..?

And please also let me know how could I recover the partition .. occupied by the Linux.. using FDisk utitliy..? of Windows..? or Is there any way to format the first partition to vfat using any of Red Hat Linux 8.0's utility.

As well as Please let me know how could I install both Linux and windows.. at the same system.. ?

Can you help Me?

Thanks..in Advance.. :)

the nice thing about linux is
::whispers::
you don't need the GUI to run it! :eek:

if you used the lilo bootloader, by default it should come up with different options, select one called failsafe or something...or download a lilo bootdisk from the net, just google it. (if you really can't find one let me know and i'll see if I can make one, but try to find it first). Anyway, use failsafe, or when loading if you have the option to do an interactive startup (select what loads) take that option and don't run any programs that will start xFree. If you used the load failsafe option, select to load text mode. Everything will load and you wil get the text version of the localhost login. Log in as anything, root is fine. All you did was corrupt GNOME. If you installed other window managers (like KDE, iceWM, etc.) type in
startx iceWM
or whatever the other window manager it was that you installed. If that doesn't work, or if you don't have another wm installed, pop your linux cd in the drive. I'm not sure how to install rpm's from the command line in redhat, but google for that, and then install all the packages you need for a particular window manager (I like iceWM if it has it, small so it will install quick). Anyway, that's not permanent, just enough so that you can get a GUI you're comfortable enough to reinstall GNOME from or save your data from. Good luck.

Sounds like a bad shutdown to us. Just a lil reminder here from someone who's relatively new to Linux :D : a bad shutdown in Linux could be fatal and as such there's always another approach to killing stuck programs, w/o hitting the restart button.

Anytime if a program doesn't seem to respond any longer, there calls for the kill process.

Launch a terminal, (right click on the desktop and select terminal), at the prompt type ps -A (there are other switches/options, of course), and you'll get a list of all programs running on your system. Identify the PID (process ID) of the app you'd like to kill, and give the command kill <program_ID>

e.g. kill 1022

List the running apps again to see if it's stopped or still there.

Some stubborn programs need the SIGTERM switch (is this a switch?) to kill them.

For more info type:

man kill

at a prompt in a terminal.

Probably now there's the need for you to run fsck that your FS might appear corrupt upon not being able to load properly.
Get into single user mode by bypassing the lilo screen (Ctrl + X) and at the CLI type linux 1 and give the command fsck /dev/your_root_device

Also, here's another tip that could save your bad day dealing w/ stuck programs in Linux, or if everything else except the k/board is stuck!

Hit Ctrl + Alt + <any of the F1 to F8 keys>. Log in as root.
Simply reboot by giving this command init 6