ext3 corruption w/ kernels > 2.4.19

Hi,

using a Dell Inspiron 8200 and a SuSE 8.1, I encounter ext3 fs data losses. Some directories are often corrupted and I need to fsck manually when I found some missing or altered files.
It seems that only a small set of possible directories are concerned (a limited range of inodes).

I only get such fs corruption using vanilla kernel 2.4.21-23, when I reboot or shutdown the machine. I could not figure out if the corruption occurs ar shutdown or startup :-\. Scanning the harddisk for bad blocks never returned positive results and ysing the SuSE's default 2.4.19, I never encounter such problems.

Does anyone have an idea of where is the problem, or where I could look for or what kind of information I could report?

Regards,

wwp