Did the usual up2date thing and rebooted. System now stops with message:

exec of init (/sbin/init) failed!!! : 2
umount /initrd/dev failed: 2
Kernel panic - not syncing: Attempted to kill init!

My System:
MSI KD7 Master MB
2x AMD Athlon 2200 CPUs
2GB RAM
3x Fujitsu MAP3367NP SCSI HDs @ 34.1GB ea
Adaptec 2120S SCSI Controller
RAID 0 102.53GB

Updated kernel (and various default suggested things) from Fedora Core 3
2.6.10-1.770_FC3smp to 2.6.11-1.14_FC3smp when the problem began.

Various lines I pulled out of /var/log/messages. The first two errors are repeated hundreds of times:

(snip)
Apr 13 16:38:37 localhost NetworkManager: nm_spawn_process('/sbin/ip route flush dev eth1'): could not spawn process. (Failed to execute child process "/sbin/ip" (No such file or directory))
Apr 13 16:38:37 localhost NetworkManager: nm_spawn_process('/sbin/ip address flush dev eth1'): could not spawn process. (Failed to execute child process "/sbin/ip" (No such file or directory))
Apr 13 16:42:00 localhost gdm[14780]: gdm_slave_exec_script: Failed starting: /etc/X11/gdm/PostSession/Default
Apr 13 16:42:01 localhost gdm[14783]: gdm_slave_exec_script: Failed starting: /etc/X11/gdm/Init/:0
Apr 13 16:42:01 localhost gdm[14784]: gdm_slave_greeter: Cannot start greeter trying default: /usr/bin/gdmlogin
Apr 13 16:42:09 localhost gdm[14784]: gdm_slave_greeter: Error starting greeter on display :0
Apr 13 16:42:09 localhost gdm[4580]: gdm_child_action: Aborting display :0
Apr 13 16:42:34 localhost init: cannot execute "/sbin/shutdown"
Apr 13 16:42:35 localhost last message repeated 18 times
Apr 13 16:42:48 localhost /sbin/mingetty[4457]: tty1: can't exec /bin/login: No such file or directory
Apr 13 16:42:53 localhost init: cannot execute "/sbin/mingetty"
Apr 13 16:42:53 localhost last message repeated 9 times
Apr 13 16:42:53 localhost init: Id "1" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes

There are about four previous kernels in grub and I've tried all of them with the same results. Don't know where to start. Really need step by step as I am not a hacker.
Thanks for any help.

Looks like I'm not gonna get any help here. Guess I'll have to just sacrifice all the files I hoped to save and install everything all over from scratch. I'm sure somebody here could have given me some kind of pointers. Not a good place to seek help, I guess.

I've produced the same response having done a moderately large 'empty trash' (about 2 GB) last night (17/4 Oz EST). Immediately after shutting down, the system froze. I probably should not have hit the 'reset' button after 20 mins of waiting, as when I logged back in the following error consistently appears:

EXT3-fs: error loading journal
mount: error 22 mounting ext3
mount: error 2 mounting none
switchroot: mount failed: 22
umount /initrd/dev failed: 2
Kernel panic - not syncing: Attempted to kill init!

Some things to try are:
1. Loading a self booting mini-Linux app (eg SimplyMepis 3.3) and mounting to the area where the inaccessible files are, or
2. If that doesn't work, try reinstalling Fedora Core 3 from the installation media, but don't elect to overwrite the whole hard drive - I once accidentally lost GRUB, and when doing a reinstall managed not to overwrite everything that existed previously. There is an option that allows you to repair at the first installation screen, but the instructions telling me what to do are on the incapacitated drive.

Any expert advice would be appreciated.

Potsilui, for some reason the problem has fixed itself, and the FC3 machine is behaving perfectly again. If your problem persists try booting from the installation media, and at the boot: prompt on the title screen type the phrase

linux rescue

That should get you going again.

Thanks for help but I opted to reinstall completely. I was able to save most of the files I wanted by FTP from the rescue prompt.