Comment 3 for bug 416660

I thought that (hard drive problems) could have been the problem, but I was able to install an older version of Ububtu with no troubles. Further, I have tried the Alpha 5 desktop release and it would not install either. I tried the install 6 times and it failed anywhere from the Alpha warning message to 74% installed; nothing consistent. I then burned an alternate CD and was able to install from that. However I received file system errors telling me to run fsck when trying to boot. fsck came back with exit 4 (did not correct anything). However it did report the clock time was in the future, but on reaching the desktop, the clock displays the correct time. The time offset into the future is the same as the offset from UTC to my time zone so this seems to be a calculation/display bug. After bypassing the problem and starting the desktop then shutting off the power (unclean shutdown) the power on check seems to correct the problem. I have tried this with both ext3 and ext4 formats and it seems to work reliably so I'm guessing that the error message is wrong. I now get a regular boot to the desktop but trying to run anything graphical locks up the desktop. The terminal seems to work for a while but after 15-20 minutes I lose the desktop, whether I am running anything or it's just sitting untouched. (memory leak/stack problem???) I installed the BOINC client and connected to the server remotely from another computer and it keeps running in the background (I can check it from the other computer) even after I lose direct access to the Karmic computer, so the problem seems to be confined to Gnome.

I'm still playing with this and will let you know if I manage to isolate anything.
  Roy