thanks for answer Patrick. Still a question. do u get the "no error handling" error from the kernel when your system is booting ? thats the only error i get at the boottime and later there is nothing that seems like a problem. the thing is that the 2.4.x kernel works fine and ANY 2.6.x kernel not. i dont know what i can do. is it possible that the problem is the ext3 driver ? Ralf