Thanks for that. I've made the change to menu-xdg as suggested there anyway - I was having the same problem with some changes not being kept after a reboot.

But I've had the " KDEInit could not launch'/mnt/hda1' " problem for ten days or so, and nothing changes despite many restarts. What I do notice is:

- Konqueror in su mode can flip up and down the folder tree with no problems;
- If I set konqueror to open each folder in a new window, it works fine when I click on folders. But if I leave it set to use the same window, I get this problem.

It's as if konqueror not in su mode didn't have sufficient permissions for something. The main annoyance is that I have all the main folders on the desktop, but can't open them by clicking. I've cheated, and can get there by another way, but it isn't right.