fstab related boot problem

[Graham Watkins]

I'm having an intermittent boot problem where the system appears to hang 
and I get the following message:

       One or more of the mounts listed in /etc/fstab cannot yet be 
mounted: /home: waiting for UUID=7x6fcee8-9505-437f-bb29-b9c894041172
swap waiting for UUID=59a31579-1a6c-46a8-9ecb-7d1679a9943e
Press ESC to enter a recovery shell

In the recovery shell, I have been able to mount and view the /home 
partition although when I then attempt to start X it crashes.  This 
happens whether I  do it as root or user (although as user it finishes 
booting before it crashes).

Booting with a live CD and then Googling produced a possible remedy:

mount -n -o remount,rw /

then

dpkg --configure -a

followed by reboot.

This did not work.

Another suggestion:

sudo mount -o rw,remount /

or sudo mount -o rw,remount /dev/sda9 (or whichever partition it is)

followed by

sudo update-grub

This also did not seem to work although after a couple of failed 
attempts at restarting X and rebooting I eventually managed to get into 
the system which is the only reason I am able to post this message.

However, I managed to get back in once before without doing most of that 
fancy stuff - I'm not sure why, so I fully expect the problem to occur 
again.

Any suggestions on how to deal with this so I can switch my computer on 
in confidence that it will actually start would be appreciated.

Sorry if this is long-winded but I wanted to give as much information as 
I could.

Cheers,

Graham