I've got Red Hat 9 on a Compaq P2, 266 mhz, 256 mb RAM, 8.5 gb HD (model DP2000 6266MMX 3200/CDS DOM). This is a fresh install.

After I close a terminal window, the GUI stops responding. I can start applications from desktop shortcuts, but when I can click menu items nothing starts. I get an hourglass icon very briefly, then the cursor returns to an arrow. Sometimes the bottom panel disappears entirely; sometimes all desktop icons disappear too. CTRL-ALT-DEL does nothing; I don't know if the keyboard is responding or not. I don't know any other keystroke sequences to check for keyboard response so I have to kill the power. It doesn't matter if I'm in Gnome or KDE.

Please don't recommend I try another GUI. I am -very- new and don't have a clue how to do that yet. Besides, if I'm seeing the symptom in two different GUI's, isn't the problem with whatever underlies the GUI systems?

there is a system monitor in your system tools menu under the RedHat Menu. You will find Ctl-Alt-Del is only a M$ keyboard shortcut. RedHat's system monitor will tell you what's using all the processes. I am pretty sure you will want to research known issues with that compaq because it may have specific hardware requiring Compuq's (scuse me Compaq's) drivers. :P This is because the instruction is proprietary to the way Compaq has the hardware configured to use resources. If you can't find linux drivers on their site (which due to the age it most likely a "no") you may need to use a different non-proprietary computer.

I haven't been able to find references to Compaq / Linux conflicts, but it doesn't surprise me. I'll keep looking. I have been able to determine that the problem occurs when coming out of a power-management induced hibernation. It's just coincidence that the first thing I've been doing after that is closing a terminal window. I'll disable power management at the BIOS level and see what happens. Thanks.

While you are in your bios disable plug and play aware o/s

one keyboard shortcut that may be of interest to you is Ctrl-Alt-Backspace. This shuts down the x window system and should return you to a command prompt or to a login screen depending on how your distro is configured. i am at work on a windows system and don't remember the full path, but you can turn off power saving hibernation through the control center in kde. i think that it is control center - power control - display power control. here you'll find controls for standby, suspend, and power off for your display. also something that could be of use is to open a terminal window and run the command: this shows a list of running processes and what system resources they are using. when this is open, induce a system stall in whatever way you have before, then look at the top display and see what process is hogging/lagging the system.

hope this helps.