Thanks for the help oombera, I bookmarked the sites you gave me.
Unfortunately before your reply I decided there might be a problem with my glibc files, so I installed the rpm I had from my red hat cds, and one thing led to another and I kinda stuffed up my sytem pretty bad, I've fixed most of it but all my start shortcuts arent there anymore. Also, now all of the file associations are gone too (for eg, I click a HTML file and it asks what program I should use to open it).
Its about this time I swore I'll get my red hat 8 cd's back and install that instead... and I'll enter the root password as a random combination of key bashings so I can't log in and stuff it up again
lol but thanks for your help oombera, when I get my system running again no doubt I'll be needing them (because i'll bet it doesn't work - again).
~ Paul