Can't debug

I have a system that is running the Intel version of Fedora Core 2.  I 
have the version of gdb that comes with Fedora and also version 6.3 or 
gdb installed on the system.  I am unable to debug any applications with 
either version of gdb.  When I try to run a program from the debugger, 
the debugger returns immediately saying the child process is missing.  
Here is an example of the output I get when trying to debug a simple 
"Hello World" program written in C++:

(gdb) run
Starting program: /home/tront/Projects/Hello
warning: Child process unexpectedly missing: No child processes

Program terminated with signal ?, Unknown signal.
The program no longer exists.
You can't do that without a process to debug.


As stated above the happens with either version of gdb I have installed 
on my system.
What could cause the debugger to behave like this?