[Leaplist] Suddenly---machine doesn't respond

[William H. Ferguson]

When I booted up Fedora core 9  this morning the usual screens rolled by.

There comes a point during boot-up  where User is presented with a 
screen which
asks whether User is the one to log in or "Other" is to log in. I clicked on
my User name and then Linux asks for my password.

But in addition to the User Name and Password options, the LogIn
screen also contains  three other  buttons
just below User name and Password.

The three buttons are labeled "Suspend"  "Restart" and
"Shut down."

Never having done it previously and curious re what the
option does, I clicked on the  "Suspend" button.
As far as I could see, nothing changed, nothing happened.

I typed in my password and boot up completed itself as usual.

I opened the E-Mail and wrote a few replies to e-mails.

But perhaps after 30 minutes, maybe more, QUITE
SUDDENLY, the screen ceased accepting the characters
which I typed.  The cursor was at the right edge of the
last character typed but if I typed a new character
---no response occurred---that is to say---the just
typed character did not appear on the screen and I could
not move forward. HItting ENTER hadno effect. I could
move the cursor anywhere else within the document I
was typing but anything I typed did not appear on
the screen.

I have no idea whether the fact that I hit "Suspend" for the
first time would cause such a problem----and if it did cause
the problem, why such a delay after hitting "Suspend"
before "Suspend" took effect?

I thought "Suspend" was a power-saving command, not a
"Don't accept Screen Input from the Keyboard"" command.

I figured that re-starting the computer would solve this
problem. I re-started it and the problem remained.
I did a complete ShutDown but the problem remained
after a cold re-boot.

What did I do to cause this trouble?

Could you guide me to regaining control of my computer?

Thanks very much,

William



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