>
> I finally got arournd to trying to update Centos 4.1 to 4.3 via the
> boot 'linux upgradeany' option.
>
> The first attempt hung the system with only 2 minutes left in the
> update procedure (according to the displayed remaing time left).
>
> It was trying to upgrade Mozilla to the latest version.
>
> I then hard rebooted the system and tried again thinking that it might
> start over where it left off (the Mozilla update).
>
> But no, it started the whole process over again.
> This time however, everything completed and no system hangs occured
> during the upgrade process. Have no idea why it hung the first time
> around.
>
> There is plenty of disc space available on the mounted the partitions to do
> what ever it needed to do (as in 60 GB).
>
> The thing i noticed though, was that everything in my ~Desktop folder
> that have been set up previous was gone.
>
> Is this normal in an upgrade procedure with Centos?

Not at all, but then what you did isn't considered 'normal' upgrade
procedure. Is there a reason to not just run 'yum update' ?