KDE randomly restarting

[sabresong]

For the past several hours, my desktop has been randomly restarting. The screen goes black, the splash screen comes up and it's as if I just turned the computer on. Whatever I might have been doing is gone, but everything seems to work normally for a while, sometimes minutes, sometimes half an hour, then it happens again. It just started happening today, and I haven't made any changes other than keeping the system updated in several days.

I can use the terminal without any trouble, so I'm pretty sure the problem is restricted to the GUI. But how do I fix it?

Thanks in advance.

[dibl]

Re: KDE randomly restarting

That's a pretty classic description of dying hardware. I would first suspect the power supply unit in the PC. If it's not that, then the suspicion turns to the motherboard.

You can try pulling and reseating all the relevant cables, including power connectors on the hard drive, and motherboard, etc., just to be sure a cable has not worked loose.

[sabresong]

Re: KDE randomly restarting

I've checked all the connections, and the computer is only a couple weeks old, plus this doesn't seem like a hardware problem. It's not a system-wide problem. It's just KDE. The terminal works fine, and I can all my applications that have a CLI run normally. I've dealt with a lot of dying hardware over the years. This doesn't have that dying hardware quality to it.

[dibl]

Re: KDE randomly restarting

The screen goes black, the splash screen comes up and it's as if I just turned the computer on.

If by "splash screen" you mean the initial OEM's splash, in which you have an option to enter BIOS, and prior to booting an operating system, then that means the computer has done a "warm" reboot. There are only a few things that can cause that -- one being a power interruption, and another being a thermal sensor hitting the limit and resetting the CPU. So, if for the moment we hypothesize that it is Linux and KDE, then it should be possible to prove that hypothesis by doing the following:

sudo apt-get install lm-sensors

sudo sensors-detect

answer "Y" to final question.

Now, in a terminal window, you should be able to enter

sensors

and see an output that includes the temperature of your CPU. So do that, periodically, and let's see if the CPU is running hot for some reason, like one of these:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1595649

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=845536

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...plasma-741126/

Perhaps, after installing lm-sensors and adding the needed modules to /etc/modules, your Kubuntu system monitor will provide a GUI panel with which to observe the temps.

If this is the problem, the question is, what's the deal with a hot CPU? Does the CPU heatsink fan work? Was thermal interface paste applied properly?

[sabresong]

Re: KDE randomly restarting

No, I see the confusion, by splash screen I mean what WAS the Kubuntu starting-up splash page until I changed it a week or so back.

But I've solved the problem. I found that someone else was having the same problem, and solved it by reinstalling the nvidia drivers. I decided to try that myself, but my video and sound are both ATI, so I installed the ATI proprietary drivers on my system, and that seems to have fixed it.

[dibl]

Re: KDE randomly restarting

Great! So, apparently the Nvidia GPU was what was overheating and resetting, causing the X server to crash and reset.