Here’s the way I can always (so far) get around the hanging and webshield down-ness. It’s a bit kludgy, but it works so far. I’ll turn off all the shields (with the right click on the ball) before I shut down. I shut the shields down permanently. When I get booted back up, I have to turn them back on with the same little shields menu. That hasn’t failed yet. When I had the machine lock up earlier this evening, of course I did not have the opportunity to turn them off before reboot. When I came back up, the ball was bearded. So I turned off the shields, rebooted, and turned the shields back on.

I don’t think the repair approach solves this anymore. One time I repaired, rebooted, and I think it came up with the bearded ball; no internet exposure occurred as the DSL modem was off. I think there is some conflict going on that prevents the webshield coming up or locking up the window manager in some fashion (locked up taskbar or other buttons, or they become locked up after one or two clicks).