Nautilus hang then crash

[Takis Diakoumis <takisd alphalink com au>]

Hi

i noticed nautilus began to hang and then just crash taking the desktop
(and whatever work i had open) with it. i'm very new to linux and had no
idea what was happening as there didn't seem to be a pattern or sequence
of events that led to the dump.

i have since noticed that it hangs (and then dumps everything) when a
mount which is open or was open at some stage in nautilus disappears
without being properly unmounted. this has occurred for both mounting of
nfs and samba shares and also cds. basically if the windows box is shut
down or the other linux box is shutdown before they are unmounted -->
dump!!

ok, i think i understand how this happens (even win explorer can dump
when it loses a network share) but the tight coupling of nautilus to the
desktop dumps everything else also (as can win explorer dumping kill the
desktop). 

is there any way to recover from such a crash - some sort of work-around
to this sort of thing happening that could prevent nautilus from dumping
or indeed a fix to the situation when it does happen. currently i have
to ctrl-alt-f1 to get a prompt, login as root and reboot the machine -
again, newbie here i'm sure there is some way to kill the user's session
at this point and then i can login again or something (something better
even!!)

anyway, i hope i'm clear enough about the problem.
any suggestions would be appreciated.

thanks
Takis