Problem origin identification

[David Curry]

A question for the more experienced and expert fedora users.

I have encountered several minor, but somewhat unconvenient (sometimes 
irritating), problems while running FC2.  Some of them surfaced on first 
boot after installation.  Others surfaced later as I broadened use of 
the system.  In several instances, the problems appeared to lessen or 
disappear with kernel and other upgrades.  On occasion, critical 
failures occured promptly following some updates as with initial 
installation of kernel-2.6.10-1.14_FC2.

While my system froze up twice in succession shortly after introduction 
of the .14 kernel, I am more and more suspicious that Gnome and/or its 
sound applications are contributing factors if not the outright cause of 
those freezeups.  There is also some basis for suspecting X.org.

Some guidance on how best to pinpoint the source(s) of system freezeups 
would be helpful.