Help for my mom

[Kevin Fries]

Hi,

I am a full card carrying geek in the Denver Metro area, so I doubt any of
you know me.  We have a group like yours up here called CLUE (Colorado Linux
Users & Enthusiasts) which I volunteer my expertise at all the time, so I
think you guys are there, very similar to who we are here.

My mother lives in Litchfield Park near Camelback and Dysart.  Generally I
can walk her through problems over the phone, but I think she has a serious
hardware issue, and it is causing a hard crash of the system.  She was on
vacation, and when she returned, it was crashing hard.  It was Kernel
Panic-ing the other day, but now she seems to get to her Gnome Desktop (oh,
Ubuntu 8.04 btw) then it does not let her do anything.  I was going to try
to get her to rename, and recreate her home directory, but the system does
not seem to be stable long enough to allow her to do this.

She just took the system down to Geek Squad (yea, yea, I know, but she did
it), and they told her the hardware was fine... But I have rarely ever seen
Hardy Herron hard lock without a hardware issue... if HH gets too FUBAR'd,
it generally reboots, or auto logs out, then a profile refresh fixes it.
So, I suspect that Geek Squad was wrong, but I need some real Linux Geek
help.

I would like to find some place, or someone that will get her up and running
again, but can barely navigate around when I am in Phoenix, let alone know
businesses there.  Can someone help be figure out how to get my mom back up
and running?  I know the Installfest is at the end of the month, we do those
here also... But I would like to get her up and going this week if possible.

Thanks for any advice and help

Kevin Fries
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