Linux does not like me no more

[mindfields]

Hi

I had been using PCLinuxOS for a few months as a dual boot with XP, recently I was using PClinux far more than XP and thinking linux is great for the first time in years of evaluating it.

A few days ago I noticed that a new fedora was out so I installed it and the install worked great but after booting into fedora after a about a minute it froze, I could still see the screen but it was unresponsive. I thought its a new distro maybe a bug or something.

So I then downloaded and installed saybyon and the exact same thing happened. I thought what a strange coincidence but nothing more.

Panicking slightly I thought I would try the latest version of ubuntu as it had never let me down before. So I downloaded the live cd which froze up as soon as I clicked on install.

I then downloaded the alternate install cd which installed OK but did exactly the same thing and FROZE on me basically as soon as I logged in??????

Can anybody explain what is going on? am I not allowed to use linux any more?

I have downloaded just short of 10 gigs of linux distros in 2 days and still can't use the things

If you can shed some light then please do

Cheers

[glennzo]

If it were me and this was something that just started happening out of nowhere I would start by removing / replacing memory and trying different video cards, network cards, modems, sound cards etc, one at a time, thinking that maybe a piece of hardware decided to go into retirement. Change cables. Whatever you can think of that might have died.

Also, get the dust out of the computer. I've gotten paid to fix computers that needed no more than a good dusting. Won't boot. Clean dust. Press button. Boots! What do you know?

[bigtomrodney]

A lot of distros have the option to run a memory test at the boot menu. Try running that to see if you have any errors. Sometimes memory goes bad over time and it can cause all sorts of unexpected errors.

[mindfields]

Well I think I have found the culprit, after removing a wireless usb adapter that was plugged in but I was not using ubuntu no longer freezes up after a few seconds.

It now freezes up as soon as I use a web browser, I tried firefox and opera and both made the system unresponsive immediately before the website loads up.

This made me think its something to do with the NIC but I was able to download system updates no problem.

I am close to giving up but not yet, I will try a memory test and a different NIC and see if I have any joy

[oz]

If PCLinuxOS was working well, and you were using it more than WinXP, why not just go back to that rather than giving up on Linux?