Red Hat 9 rc.sysinit segmentation fault

For the second time on two different pcs I have experienced the


EXT3-fs: mounted filesystem with ordered data mode.
Freeing unused kernel mamory: 132k freed
INIT: version 2.84 booting
Settomg defai;t fpmt (latarcyrheb-sun16): [ ok ]
Welcome to /etc/rc.d/rc.synsinit: line 70: 35 Segmentation fault LC_ALL=C
grep
-q "Red Hat" /etc/redhat-release Red Hat Linux
Press 'I' to enter interactive startup.
Mounting proc filesystem: [failed]
/etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit: line 90: 42 Segmantation fault LC_ALL=C grep -q
..initrd
/proc/mounts
Confuguring kernel parameters: Error: /proc must ve mounted
To mount /proc at boot you need an /etcfstab line like:
/proc /proc proc defaults
In the meantime, mount /proc /proc -t proc
[failed]
Setting clock (localtime): Fi Jan 23 09:06:35 MST 2004 [ ok ]
Loading default keymap (us): [ ok ]

problem

I can boot in rescue mode and look at the filesystem mounted in
/mnt/sysimage.

If I am able to at least copy my important files off the pc then I would
install Fedora and move on but how do I get past this????