Linux Crashing System...

[Talutha]

Hey guys, I've searched and searched all over the internet for answers to my problem and i have not been able to find a solution at all. Heres my problem:

I have tried fedora core 4, 5 and Suse 10.1 and my system keeps freezing up randomly on all distros. I have tried updating my graphics driver and updating the kernel. I dont think the kernel is the problem because I have tried all three distros. Plus I dont think I've done that correctly. The only recreatable crash I can do is when I resize the windows, it crashes for sure. The caps lock key does not light up which i've read is a kernel crash. I have ran memtest for 12 hours straight without any errors. Please help me, I feel like I've tried everything.

I have a Dell Inspiron 9100 with an ATI Radeon 9800 mobile. P4 with HT also =). Thanks Guys!

[antoniova]

I seem to have the exact same problem. The system will just freeze and won't respond to anything (neither the keyboard nor the mouse). The only way to restart is by pressing the restart button in the case. I've looked at /var/log/messages, but i haven't found any errors. Is there any other place to find error messages? or can anyone help us please? Any help would be appreciated. Thanks

[techieMoe]

What display driver are you using? I've had freezing problems with some X11 display drivers in the past. To find out, open your /etc/X11/xorg.conf file and look for the "Device" section that specifies your video card. It will look similar to this:

Section "Device"
    Identifier  "ATI Radeon 9800"
    Driver      "radeon"
    BusID      "PCI:1:0:0"

EndSection

If the value of the Driver line is not "vesa", try changing it to that and see if your freezing persists.

[antoniova]

I guess this wouldn't apply to me as i have an ancient matrox millennium. In any
case, here's my xorg config file.

Section "Device"
Identifier "Videocard0"
Driver "mga"
VendorName "Videocard vendor"
BoardName "Matrox Millennium"
EndSection


Should I change the driver to "vesa"?
Thanks!
System: FC4 kernel 2.6.11-1.1369_FC4smp , AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 3800+, pci Matrox millennium.

[techieMoe]

I guess this wouldn't apply to me as i have an ancient matrox millennium. In any
case, here's my xorg config file.

Actually, no. Bad video drivers aren't strictly a problem with ATI cards. The Vesa driver is a generic one that I've found works with around 98% of the display hardware out there. The downside is that it doesn't support 3D acceleration. Unless you're into 3D games though, that may not be a concern. I'd say give it a shot. It won't hurt anything.

[antoniova]

I went ahead and tried the vesa driver. However, X would fail to star without reporting any errors; it'd just show a black screen. Also, it'd refuse to be killed.
I had to restart the system manually ( by pressing the restart button) and boot in runlevel 3 to change xorg.conf back to "mga" driver. So far, no crashes. Most likely, though, the system will crash when least expected. And i can't recreate the error
Are there any more places to find errors of this nature besides /var/log/messages? Although... i actually don't know the nature of the problem.

Still, thanks for the help!