[ILUG-BOM] sad and depressed - Help! system hangs, files vanish

[Vickram Crishna]

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.
-- 
Vickram