Using RedHat Fedora FC3

Been using this for a few weeks did several installs. there was some wierdness on 3 machines... 1. Installing on a Dell Inspiron 8600, the install hung several times. I powered off and tried again and it was fine again. The system has been perfect ever since and works great. 2.) During install on a Dell Inspiron 7500, the install hung during CD1. I started over and it went fine until CD3, where there was a read error and I had to clean some stuff off the disk. Since then it was fine and the system now works great, although there is no sound. Maybe these lockups are all related to media issues. I am using a copy I burned. 3.) One machine my CD3 was bad (burner error, the whole disk was actually blank) and I left the machine sitting there for 3 days until I got a new copy. When I finally continued, the install finished but after the reboot there is some video wierdness like when I go to Applications/System Tools, the menu there is empty (I am root). I was going to reintsall, but now I dont' remember how I booted on the CDROM in the first place. I can't get into BIOS. These are gateway issues. Also thiis whole issue is related to the shared video ram on dizzy.