Questions hindering my use of Linux

[Bonez]

Dear Group:

I have a few questions I am trying to resolve, in my use of linux.

First, for those curious, I am running Caldera Open Linux Workstation 3.1,
on a Pentium II machine, with 296mb ram.

Here are my problems:

    When rebooting, I end up with a system frozen with the following as the
last line: Sending all processes the TERM signal.

How do I get around this, so that my system will in fact shut down and then
reboot?

more to come ...

Bonez