System crashed after kernel update

Hi all I installed the new kernel (k_smp) today on a SuSE 8.1 system: 512MB memory 2x 500Mhz PIII ICP-Vortex RAID Controller The system serves as mailserver with sendmail-8.3.12 and cucipop-xxx. After the kernel-update, the system was up-and-running for about 80 minutes, then I lost _any and all_ connections to that machine (smtp, pop3, ssh), even the local tty wasn't there anymore! In the logfiles I couldn't find any hints - it looks like after a powerfailure (which I'm sure it wasn't). Is anybody experiencing the same? Is there a problem with the SMP version of the new kernel? Any hints are very welcome, because I had to go back to the old kernel for now... :( Thanks Sandro