I just installed KDE for the first time and everything was fine.

I installed a few more k packages and at some point Konqueror stopped displaying local files when I am root - as user it is OK

web browsing works fine - I can also navigate in the navigation panel but when I try to display the directory contents in the main window it hangs up

also when I hit an FTP site my processor freaks

I can browse normally as root with Nautilus in Gnome but when I use Konqueror in Gnome as root it hangs again.

what could it be? can I change some preference / display mode or delete a configuration file?
as I metioned I just installed KDE and am not quite familiar with it.

Why are you using a GUI as root? This is generally considered a bad thing, though it is becoming less so. I don't know if Konqueror has a .konquerer directory or not, but if so, you could delete it to reset things to defaults.

It is considered bad, and I don't think its becoming less of a risk. If you run anything as root, there are more chances of damaging your system or getting hacked into and crackers doing as they wish because they have access to the root account. Thats why most people just use root for sys admin tasks.

reddazz, I completely agree with you in terms of security risk: what I meant was, as the software becomes more stable, there is less risk posed by software bugs.

I said I just installed KDE and since I must be root to install i makes sense that I just might be logged in as root in KDE.
I want to see where things are installed and was using Konqueror to view directories, to view html info and yes, a big BIG security risk here, I went out to get some dependancies. I know, I live dangerously.

please, will someone now get back to my question

I am sure you will get a lot of help with an attitude like that.

It doesn't make sense that you should be logging into KDE as root. On some distro this is even disabled by default. You can see where things are installed by using the command line or starting konqueror with root privileges whilst logged in as a normal user by doing "kdesu konqueror" or Kmenu -> System ->More Applications ->File Manager (Super User Mode).

As for why konqueror is hanging whilst you are logged into KDE, I don't know. Start it from a terminal and usually you will get some sort of output that may give you a clue as to what the problem is.

for anyone who has been following, I have found the problem - very simple. somehow the icon size was not defined or improperly defined in the profile, so even when I started with kdesu I was stuck.

and I don't have an attitude. of course I login to the the console and konqueror as su and really I am very cautious. what gets me here is that it's assumed that if you run linux you must be a geek. It's like going to Germany and saying "ein Bier, bitte" and before you've tasted it you're involved in a discussion about the latest headlines in a language you can't really speak!

for the record, I am a geek, just not a very good one!