Dear Richard, Haven't seen you getting any other replies, so I'll offer this: The only times I've seen Kmail disappearing is when there are bad files in its path. Using reiserfs 3.6 (Stock Suse 8.2 and 9.0)  I've seen memory glitches create un-listable or un-readable files. These persist over reboots and cause horrible flakeyness  as any process that references them locks up inextricably. You can test by doing a "du" of that branch of the filesystem. If it returns, you probably don't have such files. Kmail would be reading  ~/Mail/  and  ~/.kde/share/config/kmailrc  but run it over your home directory. grep -rI something-unlikely ~/  would also give a good test,  anything that reads all the files and doesn't generate too much output. If you DO have such files present that terminal window will go catatonic. Pop it. You can localize the problem until you find the exact file. (Murphy will make sure it's irreplaceable, perhaps your vmware virtual hard disk) To fix them, unmount that partition  (for / you'll have to boot a rescue system of the Suse CD)  and do a reiserfsck of the relevant partition. ie:reiserfsck /dev/hda1 It will just check the partition, and fail to find any problem, BUT FIX IT. This has happened to me more than once,  but I've never heard anyone else report it. I'd be interested to hear from anyone with similar experiences, michaelj Thanks Michael, No, I havent received any real good clues on my problem till your message. I am temporarily away from the machine, for at lest another week but will look into your suggestion when I get back. As I think about the problem, there has been some flakey stuff going on especially with the startup not being able to get hda going right. I thought I had fixed the problem but it reappeared today when my wife tried to boot the machine, I think/hope you have hit on the solution to the problem and will give you some feedback when I get back. Thanks for the help. Richard