Hello
I am a new user, and new to this list too, although I was here a couple of years back too.
I am running Red Hat 9.0 on my home PC, and the installation (which was a simple straightforward home selection from the install choice menu) has some troubling behaviour - namely the computer hangs from time to time. The hardware is an old Compaq Celeron, with 128 MB. It lacks a reset button, and in fact lacks an off switch. When the machine hangs I have no choice but to pull the plug from the mains. It has an On switch, but pressing this twice will not restart the machine. In fact, once the switch is pressed on, it no longer has any function. When the machine hangs I lose control of both the mouse and the keyboard. This happens at least once a week (the machine is usually on).
So far so good - or not so good.
When it reboots, it goes through a file system integrity check routine, which always reaches around 99% and then stops, asking me to use Ctrl-D to reboot again, which I do. It then completes the integrity check rapidly and restarts properly. On two occasions (including right now) this has gone awry.
Right now, although it allows me to start up under the registered login identities (including root) the GUI has been disturbed, with the standard icons and the wallpaper missing. I logged in as root and found the files missing from the /home/[username] folder were visible, but greyed out. The Find command says the files do not exist.
What is worse is that the downloaded mail (no longer on the mail server) is also apparently gone, and the Mozilla identity destroyed.
This happened once before, just after I had tediously completed updating the Address Book (transferred from my other laptop). I am seriously dismayed at the thought of having to do it once more, plus of course not being able to retrieve those mails, one or two of which are critical.
Can anyone guide me on a) how to prevent it hanging in the first place and b) how to recover the missing identities/files (actually since the identity login and passwords work, apparently the system is partially aware of the users, but their files are now unreachable (even the ones whose filenames I can see greyed out), including the desktop wallpaper selection.
If this is a problem already discussed here, please just point me to the thread, or else do mail me directly if you have a way forward.