Newbie: Frequent application window failures under Fedora 4 kernel 2.6.12

[Clive at Rational <clive rational-communications com>]

Hi,

   Running "Windowed" applications on Gnome desktop.

   I was getting occasional desktop application
failures under FC4 kernel 2.6.12-1.1398_FC4. The
symptoms were the applicaiton window would just close
- no error messages. The failing application was
normally Firefox, sometimes Mozilla.

   After one application window closure, sometimes it
became impossible to open applications. When  I
clicked on the icon the hour glass would appear for a
few seconds then disappear. The system sometimes
needed to reboot to recover all the applications.

    I have searched through all the log files in
directory /var/log and there are no error messages
that indicate the cause of the problem.

  I have just applied the latest Fedora 4 maintenance
   

   After applying the latest Fedora package
maintenance windows close more frequently (every 30
minutes) - and a wider range of applications. Nautilus
for example, or various "gnome-"  applications. I
sometimes get a pop-up window occurring that says
"rhn-applet failed". In this state it is impossible to
launch any application.

   Where can I find application error info or set more
intensive logging on? None of the log files in
/var/log show any indication that the problem has
occurred let along any diagnostics.

Thanks

Clive