[ale] slackware 10.1 crash

[zeb morgan]

I have a problem.

Running Slack 10.1 and it won't boot.  LILO comes up o.k.  When booting,
      when the system gets to "e2fsck" it hangs.  The error message is
"bad magic number in superblock."  "The superblock could not be read..."

Yet, when I boot from a Knoppix CD, I can read everything on the system,
so apparently the data is all o.k.

I don't think I did anything stupid.  I was installing and configuring
Slack and never got the configuration complete.

I have not been able to find any method of restoring the superblock. I
can "fix" the system by reinstalling Slack. There is nothing critical on
this system.  So the only real loss is my time

It is an old machine that I use for experimental purposes.  I have had
the identical problem recurrently on another old system.  The two
systems are different--different CPUs, different system boards.

I can run Slack 9.1 on either system without any problems at all.

Now....I am running Slack 10.1 on a third (old) system without any
problems (so far) for several weeks.

To identify my systems:  #7 is the one that has no problems.  #10 is the
  one that is currently crashed.  #11 is the one that has given me
repeated problems (and the system I am using as I "speak")--now running
Slack 9.1 and using Thunderbird for e-mail.

Does anyone have an idea as to the cause of this problem?

Does anyone have any suggestions as to how this problem can be repaired?

I will be happy to provide details as to the systems, if that is needed.
  I have omitted them here in the interest of time.

Thanks for reading this.  More thanks for any replies.

Zeb Morgan