System Suddenly Not Booting Properly

I'm running SuSE 10.0 on a system which I use everyday. A couple of
days ago I attempted to install additional RAM into this computer.
The additional RAM didn't work so I disinstalled it. Over the years
I've changed and added things to the insides of various computers so
I'm somewhat familiar with the process.

Since the RAM installation adventure the system doesn't boot properly.
I would have thought that I possibly dislodged something during the
process, however the system boots fine into Windows and everything works
like it should.

When I attempt to boot into Linux the initial boot-up graphic comes up
but after a few seconds the system goes to command line mode with the
only error I see being an fsck error on /dev/sde1. The system asks me
to log in as root and manually run fsck on the device. I've tried but
/dev/sde1 doesn't seem to exist. From command line mode at this point
I can do an "init 5" and the system comes up. However, it's not as it
should be. During the "init 5" process an error appears saying that the
network interface is not found. Other oddities with the system besides
networking not working are that the system doesn't know it's hostname,
my externally connected USB devices do not work, none of the auto-mounted
file systems are mounted except for the primary Linux file system and
that shows up twice (!), and the clock/date are wrong.

Everything looks fine using YaST. It appears that everything is set
up as it should be. If I re-setup the networking then it works fine.
However, if I reboot the networking (and everything else mentioned above)
goes away. The reboot again takes me to single user mode where I can
do an "init 5" and re-setup everything again using YaST.

As I mentioned, Windows boots fine. The date/clock is fine. The USB
devices work. And networking is fine. So, I guess it's not a hardware
problem.

I've tried to use the backup MBR with the same results. Also, if I load
system rescue from the first SuSE CD it goes to command line mode.

If someone can give me a hand here in explaining what's going on and
how to correct it I would appreciate it.

.

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