System Occasionally Freezes

[vh-bil]

Occasionally my system just freezes where my mouse and keyboard becomes unresponsive and the screen freezes also. A few minutes ago when this happened again I had some music playing and the music continued to play for a little while, my guess being it be able to play what it had already loaded but unable to load any more.

My system is:
nVidia 790ultra SLI Board
Intel QX9770 3.2Ghz Dual Core Extreme Quad
Corsair 4Gig 1600
nVidia 9800 GX2

I performed a RAM test (The one on the Ubuntu disk) and it was fine. How do I find any crash information in the logs?

I work as a software developer and I am really worried about using this computer in this state. Any help would be really appreciated.

[jmadero]

Are there any consistent things you're doing when it freezes? Also, what version of ubuntu are you running? It sounds like an I/O problem to me since you're still getting music out of it (does it just go gray when this happens). Also, do you just leave it alone for a few minutes and see if it catches up with itself?

[D-cat]

Wow. That sounds like in interrupt collision with the video display adapter... I thought those were done away with in modern machines, though I imagine a bad video call could still lock it up.

I agree with Pagan J. If this keeps up, I'd quickly investigate device interrupts, and if there's no reason to believe something's interfering there, probably start looking at the display driver.

[vh-bil]

Are there any consistent things you're doing when it freezes? Also, what version of ubuntu are you running? It sounds like an I/O problem to me since you're still getting music out of it (does it just go gray when this happens). Also, do you just leave it alone for a few minutes and see if it catches up with itself?

-No I thought it was VMWare which I use for work, but it happens while running different software.
-I am running Ubuntu Hardy (Always updated...)
-I have not seen it go grey after this happening.
-It has never come back from the dead. I have left it for quite a while, but get worried about what it is doing to the hardware and reboot it.

It just happened this morning again, I turned on my PC ready for work and went for a shower to wake up a bit. when I had got back it was a black sceen (It must have goon black saving the screen from the login screen not from this issue "I think") and the fans where pulsing a bit in the computer with no response from keyboard or mouse.

As in my first post I was moving the mouse and it just stopped, so it can't be an issue if I am using or not at the time. It also happens on my screen saver

Is there way to check the log?

[vh-bil]

Wow. That sounds like in interrupt collision with the video display adapter... I thought those were done away with in modern machines, though I imagine a bad video call could still lock it up.

I agree with Pagan J. If this keeps up, I'd quickly investigate device interrupts, and if there's no reason to believe something's interfering there, probably start looking at the display driver.

Sorry but I do not know how to check interrupts, is that done in the BIOS?

I have tried many different nVidia display driver versions. I thought it may be the fact I had to import my 9800gx2 because they where not really around at the time and the Linux support for that card was not that great. It has been around for a while now and the problem is still there.

[devils casper]

It looks like a Graphics Card driver problem only. Have you tried "vesa" driver instead of "nvidia"?

[D-cat]

when I had got back it was a black screen (It must have goon black saving the screen from the login screen not from this issue "I think") and the fans where pulsing a bit in the computer with no response from keyboard or mouse.

That could actually be something different. Power saving modes are known to sometimes put components into a sleep they never wake up from. My new recommendation is to set your power saving mode to 'Presentation' (do not shut off the monitor or the hard drive)(KPowersave applet in KDE, I don't use gnome, so I don't know what to use for that). You could also try booting with the kernel option acpi=off , which leaves all power control features in BIOS control.

[pavlo_7]

I would check video card itself. Physically.
Not too long ago I had problem with my computer that showed the same symptoms as you described (after a while everything would freeze).
I am also running Ubuntu Hardy and updating it.
It turned out that video card went bad (2 capacitors on the card blew up). I think at that time I was using Nvidia driver which was installed through apt-get.
Replacing video card, and installing original Nvidia driver ( for my card - NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-177.82-pkg2.run) fixed the problem.

[D-cat]

The depends on just how random the lockups are. If you cannot reliably cause the card to lock up under a certain circumstance, rather it just does whenever it d@mn3d well pleases, then absolutely check the card itself.

Thank you Pavlo, sometimes we get so involved with the software end of diagnostics we forget that the hardware is also fallible.

[pavlo_7]

sometimes we get so involved with the software end of diagnostics we forget that the hardware is also fallible.

Yeah, I could not believe it myself when I saw the card, especially that it would still work for a while before it would freeze.