occasional freeze-ups when restarting/changing user?

[kiisu]

My laptop seems to lock up when i'm rebooting or changing users. It doesn't do this every time or with any regularity that I've noticed, which makes it harder to pinpoint the cause.
When it does this I get a silvery-grey blank screen. I have to try holding the power button, sometimes 5-10 times before it will properly reboot. Needless to say this is a small but annoying matter. Suggestions?

[dibl]

Re: occasional freeze-ups when restarting/changing user?

First suggestion -- if possible, this method of shutting down your locked-up system is better than using the power switch:

http://kubuntuforums.net/forums/inde...opic=3088251.0

[kiisu]

Re: occasional freeze-ups when restarting/changing user?

Thank you for the link!

Will give it a try and report back next time this happens.

[JamieC68]

Re: occasional freeze-ups when restarting/changing user?

Hi Kiisu,

This might be a driver issue or a memory issue as well. How much memory does the system have? I found with my old system here running Gutsy that 1 gig made it run a whole lot smoother then 512. You might try updating your video drivers as well.

Good luck!!
8)

[kiisu]

Re: occasional freeze-ups when restarting/changing user?

I don't thjink its memory. There's one gig, and its pretty much a brand new Toshiba. Shouldn't be a hardware issue.

I tried the suggestion above and if anything it made it worse. This time I couldnt get it to reboot, I had to remove the batter and start up fresh.

I am new to linux and did some messing around a month ago trying to get my wireless to work. Maybe I changed a setting without realising it. I think if this doesnt get solved I will try a fresh install when I get home from Christmas vacation. If the problem persists after that it's adios Kubuntu; doesn't matter how many nice features this OS has - if it routinely turns my comp. into a paperweight its not worth it.

[kiisu]

Re: occasional freeze-ups when restarting/changing user?

If this helps, here's a couple of examples of people who had the same sort of issue:
http://kubuntuforums.net/forums/index.php?topic=2271.0
http://kubuntuforums.net/forums/inde...opic=3086880.0
Neither seemed to really get resolved.

[dibl]

Re: occasional freeze-ups when restarting/changing user?

If you open Konsole and enter

top

that will show the running processes in descending order of resource-hogging. In other words, you'd like to know what process is sucking up your resources at the point in time when it "freezes", and top will show you that.

[kiisu]

Re: occasional freeze-ups when restarting/changing user?

but will that really help me? Once the system locks up I have to reboot totally, so that doesn't give me info from before the reboot, right?

I tried using the konsole to reboot ('sudo shutdown -r now) and it worked fine, but like I said this doesnt happen everytime, so only time will tell. If that solves it I really dont mind typing that everytime I shutdown/restart. In the meantime, is there a similar command to log out/change users? (sudo logout -r now ... ?)

[kiisu]

Re: occasional freeze-ups when restarting/changing user?

Using command line shutdown worked alright the first few times, but when i woke up today it froze again.

Please, any suggestions, or where to look on my comp. for shutdown commands, anything like that before I do a reinstall? Its very frustrating because its been a few weeks of trials and tribulations, but i now have everything in working order, the entire system is set up the way i want it, except this new problem ... i'd really rather not start all over!

thanx