MTAB problem: file exists but is not found

Hello, My laptop was not correctly shut down. Ext2, the file system is now corrupted (don't tell me to change to Ext3, it is SuSE-7.3). During boot the partitions are not mounted because /etc/mtab is not created. As the / and /usr partitions are not mounted, a lot of applications are not installed (PCMCIA, etc). I can mount the partition manually after boot (with mount -n /dir_to_mount). /etc/mtab does not show but I always have error message "mtab file exists - Error input/output". It is apparently a problem of inode that was not suppressed. How can I solve the problem that means how can I recreate the /etc/mtab file? -- Alain Barthélemy cassandre@bartydeux.be http://www.bartydeux.be