login in graphic mode + hard-drive

hi to everybody,
i inherit a computer from my boss with openSUSE (but i don’t know which version).

i had no problems since yesterday when (apparently without a reason) i tried to login in graphical mode and nothing happened, so i logged in console mode and everything worked fine (even “startx”).

hence the problem is temporary solved, but i don’t know what happened, and i have to fix it because it is not my own pc!

moreover today (i still don’t know the reason) i could not mount my external hard-disk, which was ok until two days ago… the error reported is

org.freedesktop.Hal.Device.PermissionDeniedByPolicy
org.freedesktop.hal.storage.mount-removable no

is there the possibility that the two problems are linked? how do i solve them?

thanks