I'm attempting to dual boot a Dell precision 390 with sata drive. Grub comes up fine and gives the option of booting my linux and winxp. If I boot winxp it loads perfectly, however when I select centos it decompresses linux just fine loads the kernel but when it gets to the desktop (cursor shows and i can move the mouse)it just hangs with the progress bar doing nothing. It doesn't start loading kde or aything. Has anyone else experienced this? Is there a way for me to log in via command mode? The installation of CentOS completed with no errors so I don't know whats causing this.

It appears to be having trouble starting X-windows. The most common cause is an incorrect video driver or xorg.conf settings.

Try this:
reboot
when the grub menu appears, hit tab to stop it.
type "e" for edit and add "single" (without the quotes)to the kernel line
then boot

This should get you into a terminal mode so you can look at config files, etc.

When you installed, what options did you see for video settings and what did you choose?
What is the video card and monitor?

Thanks for the help pixellany. I changed boot option to single and then the kernel panicked as it booted up. I think the problem was with the installation, I've reinstalled now and I can dual boot just fine. The only thing I changed was that I tossed the CD's and downloaded the DVD iso. CD's suck I should've learned my lesson by now. Everytime I download ISO images to CD's something goes wrong!

Thanks!