Grub doesn't count down seconds; RH 9 won't boot

[Matt Morgan]

I have been running RedHat 9 for a few months.  This is a dual install; grub boots up and lets me select a linux kernel or Windows XP home.

I have a problem that occurred once before, about a month ago, but then fixed itself after a time.  It's happening again and seems more resistant to self-repair.  Basically, XP home will boot if I choose it from grub.  But linux won't boot, no matter which of the 3 latest kernels I select: a few steps after RH enters "interactive startup," the boot messages pause after "Configuring Kernel Parameters" and that's that.  Bootup does not continue from that point. By the way, hitting "I" for interactive startup doesn't work, in case that matters.

The only other interesting piece of evidence is this: when this problem is happening, grub doesn't count down the seconds to boot the default kernel (the most recent linux kernel).  I have it set to 10 seconds of wait time before it's supposed to load linux. But what I observe is, although grub says I have ten seconds, it doesn't count down the seconds and never loads linux until I select it and hit enter.

Last time this happened, it was a day before I left on vacation and I didn't bother trying to fix it.  When I returned, linux began booting normally again, so I didn't ever figure out what happened.  

Any thoughts?

thanks,
Matt Morgan

[Matt Morgan]

Hold on, I just found something.

http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&...0nnrp1.deja.com

So maybe my CMOS battery is dead! I wouldn't know if the clock is off in Linux, because it gets set via ntp during boot. But I definitely had to reset the clock in WinXP lately--I just figured whatever, XP Home stinks, and blamed it on MS.

I guess it makes sense that grub won't count down the seconds, since it's gotta be using the system clock for that. Although I don't know why AC doesn't power the system clock when the battery is dead ...

Thanks in advance for other advice anyone has.