update manager stops functioning, wont die, then cascade of bad things

Hi,

I can't offer any more details than this anecdote atm. sorry. Also note that from memory this is the third time this has happened to me.

So i use the update-manager to update my system... it does its merry thing then part way through installing the updates a package fails to install properly. So i get a prompt telling me, in this case, that gtk-sourceview or some such failed to install and returned with an exit status 1 (i think). I click o.k. update manager then sits there doing nothing stuck in a state where widgets are greyed/non-interactive, and when you mouse over it, it has the little rotating 'working' pointer. I am unable to end the process, it just sits there in a state of limbo.

After some minutes i log out, upon which i am presented with an X error screen, telling me that X has crashed and could not be restarted. Also i couldn't interact with the X error screen; tab, enter and space bar had no affect on X (could not select o.k.). Not knowing what to do i cntrl-alt-f1'd and did a reboot -n.

During the linux boot process, the boot was halted and usplash was replaced by a fsck screen telling me:
/dev/hda2: UNEXPECTED INCONSISTENCY; Run fsck manually.
fsck died with exit status 4. ....

So i run fsck and fix _all_ the errors that it asks me if i should fix... i don't know what to do so i just default to hitting 'y' for every query!

This does the trick, as it has on previous occasions, so i reboot -n again.

All is well! gdm starts, and once in a gnome session, i use the terminal to finish the update; sudo dpkg --configure -a. This all works fine. As far as i can tell no data is damaged.

So as i mentioned this is the first time this has happened to me. On all occasion it occurred after update-manager ran into problems.
I don't know if it is a bug, or my hard-drive coming to the end of its life (i hope not!). I don't know where to find any logs that may have been created, and i couldn't find similar bugs, so maybe its just me and my system and something i am doing. I need my hand held to help you bug killers!

I have used only packages from ubuntu repositories... this includes the glx-nvidia-new driver, apart from that i have made few changes from the default install.

Regards
Matthew