According to the book "SUSE LINUX Toolbox" you can scan a file system (here reiser, which does have reiser-utils installed) for errors at the logical level with fsck (fsck -TVy /dev/sdax), but upon doing so for all partitions except swap (never tried it) got repeated reply of "Partition /dev/sdax is mounted with write permission cannot check it". Anyone have some idea of how to get around this, as I need to correct some bad blocks in what my boot-up calls "file system NOT clean" and which leads into an unviewable screen unless use Failsafe???

The easiest way is to boot the machine with a LiveCD or installation CD, or a flash stick. Then, you can fsck away to your heart's content.

If you can't or don't want to reboot for some reason, you could always drop to single-user mode, unmount the file systems, and run fsck. Beware, though, as if you are not using a directly-connected console, you will lose your connection as soon as you drop to single user mode.

The correct way of doing fsck is here..pls follow it to solve your owes

http://unixbhaskar.blogspot.com/2010...n-root-or.html

Thanks foodown for your advice. I used "Rescue" option on install dvd to get login and then used fsck on all partitions and no errors; then tried badblocks and 0 bad blocks; then used the suse 11.2 "Repair Installed System" (not come with the 11.3) limiting it to just what standard and common to both versions (file systems and their mounting, etc.) and again got reply of no problems. With screen still with colored lines, I then tried the 11.3 text's advice of moving .gconf, etc. and followed advice to letter, but still no improvement. Stll getting message on "Failsafe" bootup that "file system NOT clean".
What is "Failsafe" seeing (and which is effecting my screen), that the tools for repairing file systems is not seeing??? Any even hints as to what to try next immensely appreciated.