How to fix Gnome problems listed herein (Fedora9 64bit)

[Leslie Satenstein <lsatenstein videotron ca>]

My configuration:  disk1 IDE   (Windows XP and PCLINUXOS with multiple partitions)
                               disk2 SATA (UBUNTU with multiple partitions)
                                disk3 Fedora9 64bit LVM 
RAM                        3 gig
CPU                         Dual Core intel D930
My problem system Gnome2.22.2  with Fedora9 (also my preferred Bootable System).

1)
a)  When I create a new account (Fedora9 64 bit or even 32bit) with Gnome version 2.22.2, the desktop is clear, except for the home directory.
If user clicks on Places, and clicks on a unmounted disk partition, the partition is mounted, and unmounted when user logs off or when an unmount is requested.  This is the normal and expected situation.  But when the user has sudo ability and does a sudo su command a few times, at every logon all the disk partitions are on the desktop, and do not follow the "new user logon" functionality. 

b) Given the problem of a) above, if one clicks on Places again, and choses a drive that is already showing on the desktop, that drive is remounted.  Then, there is no way for the user to exit or shutdown the system normally. The system message appearing is "unable to unmount the partition".

c) there does not appear to be a method to restore to the default action where no disk partitions are mounted at logon time.

2) 
 Occasionally, a successful Gnome logon opens up with an empty desktop. The drives and everything are mounted, but not visible. The only way to recover is to have the user logout and log in again.  Somehow I think it is a timing or race condition between Fedora's HAL and Gnome. If HAL is late, gnome opens the user desktop empty. Perhaps it is just a Gnome problem.  How can I detect this?

3) 
When the other drives are always showing up on the desktop, and I click on Places, for any one of "Home folder, to ... Download", instead of opening the directory to show contents, Gnome starts a music program (XMMS). This is indicative of a corrupted pointer.  No indication given about how to restore the correct pointer(s).

4) 
Evolution bug.  I cannot copy from an evolution email to an email opened with Firefox.  It just does not paste to Firefox. BUT, if I paste to OpenOffice or to any text editor, I can then copy from the OpenOffice text to the Firefox email (My target is from evolution email to Yahoo.com email)
Why do I need to pass via an intermediary?

5)
Evolution address / Contacts list has room for 4 addresses. The list ends up with email addresses that are not available anywhere in the contact management window.  Currently, to fix, I unload the contact list, and with an editor, I remove the faulty entries, I clear out the entire existing contact list and reload my corrected version. (export-->correct-->import).

6)
This pertains to the Gnome website.  I have a Canada French multilingual keyboard, but my languages are english. When I chose to visit the links for documentation, all is in French, with no ability to switch languages. I am advised to visit the firefox settings. The settings show English as priority.
(This is a web problem, I don't think it is a Gnome problem).   


Leslie in Montreal