Should I format this drive or try to fix all these errors I am getting?
 

This linux system is really unstable. I have compiled a list of some of the problems with it. Would it be worth it to try and fix these or should I format this HD?
These are just some of the prblems I am having, most show in dmesg:

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Oops: 0000
CPU: 0
EIP: 0010:[<c01407ed>] Tainted: P
EFLAGS: 00210206
eax: 5e632056 ebx: db67ff20 ecx: db602890 edx: d4739f1c
esi: 00000000 edi: 00000000 ebp: d4739f84 esp: d4739f0c
ds: 0018 es: 0018 ss: 0018
Process opera (pid: 5228, stackpage=d4739000)
Stack: 00000000 00000001 db602890 db67ff20 dd7ae009 00000016 bddd1132 c0122a4e
d4739f84 dd7ae000 00000000 d4739f84 c0140d39 00000000 dd7ae000 00000001
c0141144 c0126976 00000000 00000004 c4aa2ef0 00000000 dd7ae000 bfffe930
Call Trace: [<c0122a4e>] [<c0140d39>] [<c0141144>] [<c0126976>] [<c01360ae>]
[<c013644b>] [<c0108a93>]

Code: 8b 40 28 85 c0 0f 84 28 01 00 00 8b 75 04 85 f6 74 07 ff 46

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
spurious 8259A interrupt: IRQ7.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
THIS REPEATS ABOUT 50 TIMES IN DMESG

pci_hotplug: PCI Hot Plug PCI Core version: 0.5
shpchp: shpc_init : shpc_cap_offset == 0
shpchp: shpc_init : shpc_cap_offset == 0
shpchp: Standard Hot Plug PCI Controller Driver version: 0.4
pci_hotplug: PCI Hot Plug PCI Core version: 0.5
pciehp: PCI Express Hot Plug Controller Driver version: 0.5
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
QImage::convertDepth: Image is a null image
QImage::smoothScale: Image is a null image
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Could not init font path element /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/CID/, removing from list!
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
VS-500 Unknown Uniqeness-67 108865 IDE0(3,1): us-5150 invalid format found in block 8250, fsck Reiserfs_update_sd: i/o failure trying to update.

I also receive segmentation faults in firefox, Opera, starting the xfce file manager and get kicked to KDM at random.

If I was you, I'd format and do a zero-fill on the HD. Save the important files while you can and format+zero/fill. I was having similar problems with my HD once and I was just ignoring the errors. It turned into a real nightmare after a severe crash...

I'm not persuaded that there is a disk-drive problem here. There could well be a hardware problem.

Use smartctl to run self-tests on the disk drives, to see if they report issues. Then, consider retiring the motherboard.

If the instability coincides with any sort of hardware or software change, presume that the instability must be causally related to that, even if the connection is not immediately obvious. The hypothesis may prove to be incorrect, but it is usually a good start.

What kind of hard drive is it (make, model) and how old is it? It could simply be that the hard drive is on its last legs

I used to get this all the time with Slackware as well. I'd like to tell you how to fix it, but I never figured it out. :(

IIRC this is a QT error that one of your applications is committing. Maybe nothing to be concerned about, unless the program seg faults right after this. You can check it out with a debugger, assuming the program was compiled with debugging symbols (possibly unlikely).

This is not a problem. X uses a list of directories to find fonts; this directory has been registered in the list but doesn't actually hold fonts. (Most likely, it doesn't even exist.) You can remove the entry from xorg.conf if you want; that will eliminate the message.

Segmentation faults are quite a problem; I don't know how a bad hard disk could cause them, though. If these programs were compiled with debugging symbols (maybe unlikely, but possible) you can check where they're going wrong with gdb. Are your packages all up to date?

Well, its a mute point now. Just a few hours after posting this, I had to reboot, got a fsck error, then a message saying to use fsck --rebuild-tree, tried that and got an kernel error paging request, then seg fault had to reboot now all I get is Kernel panic. :O
The HD is only a year old WD, and the other hardware is name brand stuff.
Anyone know if there is any way to get to the data to save it?

You have a disk controller error. disable dma temporarily until you fix it.

hdparm -d

how do I get it to boot to a console so I can do that?

Knoppix maybe?

Ubuntu install disc?

dynebolic live disc?

pick one.

Knoppix is the typical and pretty much the defacto standard for this type of work, so you might as well go with that. Unless ofcourse you have another distro cd with a restore option you'd prefer to use.

I tried the slackware disk and I cannot mount anything to get to the files.
I booted up with it, tried to change over to the HD using cd /dev/hda1 and it would not let me.

Files in /dev represent interfaces to devices; you have to mount /dev/hda1 to a point in the root hierarchy before you can `cd` to the mount point and see what's on the partition. To mount the partition into the directory "/mnt/hd" (which must exist before hand) use the command "mount /dev/hda1 /mnt/hd". But you should never do internal filesystem data structure work on a mounted partition.