Help please

[Barry Drake]

Hi ...  I've got a silly problem that I just don't understand.  Any time 
I try to do anything with a file or folder, I get the message 'no such 
file or directory'.  Just occasionally, after a reboot, I can use it, 
but this is rare.

I have several editions of Ubuntu installed, and the problem is there on 
all of them, including yakkety that I installed this morning.  The 
permissions are read/write of everything including directories.

Any thoughts?    Thanks,  Barry.