Freeze - Intel graphics problem back.

[OldNick]

My upgrade to Wily has been something of a disaster.
I find it much slower to load the desktop - getting a black screen which eventually resolves into the proper desktop.
HOWEVER the worst thing is the Intel screen freeze is back. I had not encountered this until August / September time and I discovered that people have been having this problem on and off since 2013.
I found a forum discussing the latest outbreak and a discussion talking about rolling back to find where it wasn't going wrong - this seems to have happened with the last kernel update before Wily came out. And now it's back.

The symptoms are unexplained freeze - I've tried various key combinations to get it going, but the only solution is forcing hardware shutdown and restart. This can happen after 10 minutes or a day. there doesn't seem to be rhyme or reason to it.
I have procured the Intel driver installer and the system now uses the proper driver. However I've just noticed that it refuses to use correct refresh rate for my monitor - obstinately using 30hz when my monitor is designed for 60.

I've wound back the kernel to the one before upgrade (when things seem to have worked) but I again have instability. This would seem to imply that while the older version of plasma played nicely with it, the new one doesn't.

Any help, suggestions welcome.
But keep them simple - I'm not a console wizard, more one of those wimps who needs a GUI to do things.

[OldNick]

I've tried the recent kernel update and within 5 minutes it froze again.
So back to 3.19 - which is not receiving any updates because 4.* is still installed...

What I was hoping for in starting this thread was advice as to how to access the logs to diagnose the problem - and which logs to access.

Recent updates have speeded up the starting of Plasma desktop although I seem to have lost USB connectivity.

Note to self. Only use LTS versions.

[keys84]

Hi
newb here too

try

dmesg | tail

to see if any error messages

also

lshw -C video

to check chipset and drivers

paste back
ill try to help if at all possible

[GreyGeek]

Some advice: the next time you re-install use the Btrfs so that you can create snapshots before updates and if things don't work out you can log into a root terminal and undo the changes in @ and @home.

[jpc2769]

I think I might be experiencing this problem as well.

After upgrading from 14.04 to 15.10, I noticed the lag; about 2/3 of the time, a mouse click anywhere results in a halt of the entire system of several seconds (I can actually read about a page on my kindle between the time that I click and the time that something happens). Also sometimes when I am typing (like as I type this message, or search for a program) there is a similar lag.

Earlier today i was trying to watch a video (.mp4 saved on my external drive), after a few minutes the screen went black, then to the login prompt like I had put the computer to sleep and just woken it up; when I logged on I got an error message about ksmserver not being able to run, and about 14 crash reports about akonadi. I tried watching the video again, but the video froze while the audio kept playing, and the mouse and keyboard were unresponsive. I ended up turning off the computer and booting up in windoze.

I ran the commands mentioned above, here is what I got:

dmesg | tail

[ 31.381391] IPv6: ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): wlan0: link is not ready
[ 31.564003] ip_tables: (C) 2000-2006 Netfilter Core Team
[ 31.577705] ip6_tables: (C) 2000-2006 Netfilter Core Team
[ 32.068281] e1000e: eth0 NIC Link is Up 100 Mbps Full Duplex, Flow Control: None
[ 32.068287] e1000e 0000:00:19.0 eth0: 10/100 speed: disabling TSO
[ 32.068323] IPv6: ADDRCONF(NETDEV_CHANGE): eth0: link becomes ready
[ 79.753797] Bluetooth: RFCOMM TTY layer initialized
[ 79.753804] Bluetooth: RFCOMM socket layer initialized
[ 79.753808] Bluetooth: RFCOMM ver 1.11
[ 191.590595] nf_conntrack version 0.5.0 (65536 buckets, 262144 max)

lshw -C video

*-display
description: VGA compatible controller
product: 3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller
vendor: Intel Corporation
physical id: 2
bus info: pci@0000:00:02.0
version: 09
width: 64 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: msi pm vga_controller bus_master cap_list rom
configuration: driver=i915 latency=0
resources: irq:27 memory:f0000000-f03fffff memory:e0000000-efffffff ioport:5000(size=64)

Jason