what to do when console crashes

[mohaukachi]

hi, im in the process of restoring deleted files from an old lacie firewire drive. im using all sorts of programs, but they all hang and crash with no errors or notifications. they just dissapear. so im tring to get into console to read the crash log, but console hangs on startup. completely, nothing to do but force quit it. ive even restarted.

i cant seem to find any info on whats going on at this point. and googling this dosent seem to help. thanks for anything you guys can think of!

k