[olug] Trying to get to the bottom of a laptop malfunction

[Thomas D. Williamson]

I am using openSuSE 11.4 64 on a laptop. Friday the pointer did not  
close windows, and when I went to the start panel the icons for  
programs lost their association and had a generic folder. When I tired  
to shut down there was no action, and there was no effective action  
through mouse clicks at all. I did a hard shut down. When it rebooted,  
it went through grub and started normally, only the keyring password  
was not requested and the network card was not initiated. After a few  
minutes of normal operation, the same freezing and lack of mouse  
clicks doing anything happened. I tried to do some things through the  
BIOS diagnostics, but these did not seem to tell me anything.

I have tried to start openSuSE in failsafe mode, but it has not been  
able to start, it is running through something and lists these lines  
for the last three hours:
/etc/initscript: line137: /sbin/mingetty: [the next part is either]  
success [or] inpuit/ouput error
Another line that appears is:
INIT: id "[the numbers that appears are 1through 6]" respawning too  
fast disabled for 5 minutes

I suspect there is a hardware failure, but  I am not sure what it is.  
When I have tried to do a repair system from my 11.4 install disk,  
after loading up to start, I get a request to "insert disk 1in cd  
drive." As there is only one disk, i tell it okay, but it does not  
find it. When I select the other option for that, I get to the general  
installation screen, and am unable to continue with the repair or to  
attempt a reinstallation.

Any ideas on what is going on and what may be failing would be appreciated.

Thanks

Tom Williamson

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