I really appreciate all your help, unfortunately I still cannot
read your instructions. It comes thru on this end as total gibberish
with unknown characters and even a strange icon which I would be at a
loss as to how to duplicate. I've tried at least 50 different fonts to
see if it could be decoded, but nothing has worked so far.
On the brighter side, the altnerate keys you gave me DID work !!!!
Voila, now if I can just remember that combination LOL. Thanks so much.

Yes two different scenarios. I totally reformatted all my discs and did
a fresh Manual install so my /home would be separate partition. Since
then have discovered my alternate HD is also bad, so now there are 2
drives on their way back to Seagate. I suspect that most of my other
problems are related to that bad HD. It wasn't dead, but it wouldn't
hold any data. Refused to let me add a folder even tho it says I was
owner with full permissions. Tried reformatting, but it wouldn't hold
and unable to do a filesystem check on it- always failed suspect bad
sectors- it was a recent replacement for another HD that died some time
ago- didn't last even a month.