Fedora Installation :: Boot Error "the Blinking Underscore"?

So, to start of this is about a fedora 12 x86_64 installation from DVD media downloaded via torrent and verified by checksums and dvd verification tool

hardware is:athlon x4 620
4GB 2channel ddr3 1600mhz ram
1x 250gd sata2 hdd
asrock mobo with amd 785 chipset (radeon HD4200 128mb onborad mem + 512mb from ram) + raid controller (1,0,10,raid ready,jbod)

First of this is my first linux installation and even though I have read the installation instructions and documentation thoroughly, I can't exlude the possibility tha I messed up (BIIIIG). So, what happened in my

case:
installed fedora 12 from dvd on a raid ready sata disk.I should point out that trying to install with the default selection (selection 1 on dvd boot menu) resulted in a system crash/freeze, with the monitor displaying white/pink and green/black stripes, so I did the installation with the basic display driver instead (option 2 in the dvd's boot menu)during installation I left most things on default. Especialy grub I didn't even touch. It said that it would setup grub on the disk's MBR which sounded ok to me.Things I did change were:Partition Layout, 300MB boot on 1st primary partition, 32GB root on 2nd, 16GB swap on 3rd, /home and /tmp on Logical Volume (partition 4) wich is the rest of the disks space about 200GB Installed packages (added web development packages as well as java , eclipse etc.)

installation completed without showing any errors so the system rebooted.once booted from the disk (hdd) the installation was done in, the system would just freeze on a black screen with a blinking underscore. this freeze happened before grub showed any signs of existence

So after I checked and rechecked the consistency of the error and rummaged around the internet for info I thought that it would be wise to try and boot the installed system using some other procedure. (I should point out that at this point that I redid the Fedora installation a couple of times trying different setups but apparently nothing helped)So I tried the "Boot from local drive" option, which resulted in starting up the system with no errors.Leaving the, I assume, grub settup problems for later (I have no internet on that computer yet) I started looking around and familiarizing myself with the new environment and realized that the monitor driver was working only up to 1280x800 and since my monitor is a full HD TFT panel I went to find instructions on how to instal the ati display driver.finding these: gofedora.com/how-to-install-ati-catalyst-fglrx-98-drivers-fedora-11/I downloaded the .run file copied it from laptop to desktop via flash drive and started the above listed procedure I only got to step 5 (blacklisting) since when I tried to save the file the system said something about having to be root user So I logged out to try to login as root but something went wrong during logout because all colors went funny and high contrast and kind of blurry (text was quite difficult to read) and after I hit (panicked out of my mind) a few buttons I got a fullscreen console with the messages:Bridge firewalling registered virbr0: starting userspace STP failed, starting kernel STP I cand remember if I could type or issue any commands at that point but apparently I rebooted the system (again via the insallation media)Grub starts the boot sequence, fedora loading bar appears, only to issue the message:"lo: Disabled Privacy Extensions" At this point I can write to the machine but nothing happens and i can move around the mouse with a huge white rectangle for a cursor(for selecting stuff i guess)