Ken There is a feature in gnome that says "If a launched app does not open in X secs it's probably gone awol so kill it"
This is a problem on slower machines or when your machine is under load. There is a way to turn it off, I think it has been covered before try the archives or some one else may have a better memory. Grant -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
