OK, so this sounds real dumb, but just how are you supposed to shutdown the PC ?

With RedHat, there was a "Shutdown" option, along with "log out".
With Vector 3.2 & KDE 3.1 there is only "Logout" and "Lock Screen", and that is even when logged in as root.
After KDE has closed & we're back to the CLI, I type "shutdown now", but it always seems to return to the prompt.
So, I then power off. On power on, the preamble nealry always reports that hda wasn't dismounted cleanly.

Now, the thing won't boot because it says the file system has errors...

So, what's the proper shutdown procedure. The PC has an AT PSU, so nothing fancy like APM.

have you tried 'shutdown -h now' ? because you wrote 'shutdown now' which I don't know what that would do.

just type

halt

as root.

when vector boots and says the system has errors, is should say type root password to enter console and run fsack, there's a box in *** border,
which tells you the command to run to fix the filesystem

try that

Shade

erm, this thread should have been in "General"...

shutdown now - seemed to work, or rather shut something down. I have just finished re-installing Vector, & did shutdown -h now & ended with the line 'power down'.

excellent, thanks.

As for when the filesystem had errors, yes, I got the dialogue box, which said login as root, or hit ctrl-D to continue normal loading. Nothing happened when I tried to type root, but ctrl-D caused the system to reset/reboot.

Hopefully, the problem was caused by not shutting down properly, which I now know how to do !

cheers chaps.

Yeah, chances are the problems were caused by that.

I've been there. If I may suggest, if you have the option, I'd go with Reiserfs as a partition type...since I did that, those problems have been very few and far between even when my system doesn't go down properly (also a rare occurrance).