Ubuntu
ubiquity package

Compaq 615 Ubuntu 12.04 Freezing - unusable

Asked by Angus Kerr

Hi There

I recently upgraded (read: fresh install alongside 11.04) my wife's laptop to Ubuntu 12.04 i386 vanilla edition.

Initially the laptop would boot up no problem, but would occasionally lock up when viewing Youtube videos in firefox. Lately, it has got to the point that if you are lucky enough to get to the login screen at all (maybe a 1 in 5 chance) the laptop would freeze about 5 seconds after logging in. When I mean freeze, I mean that it needs a hard reset, i.e. Ctrl-Alt-F1 cannot get a console to restart x or whatever. I seems to have been triggered by a software update. All packages are up-to-date.

In the recovery mode, everything works except that the fail safe x will not run (error log, something about no vesa driver available). Also the console will work, and I can issue commands from the console.

I had no problems with the previous distribution (11.04) which works perfectly, and is as stable as a rock. I can still boot into the old OS and it still functions properly - and there are no major issues. One annoying thing, but nothing like what I have now.

The machine is a HP Compaq 615 running Athlon Dual Processor at 2.2Ghz with 3 GB of RAM. Graphics Card is an ATI Radeon 3200. Hard drive size is 160GB, with 80 being reserved for Windows.

In desperation, I ripped the hard drive out of this machine and put it in another laptop. I have it running in another Intel Core 2 duo laptop, so I am able to retrieve data from applications that need the gui front end to function.

I would very much like to get to the bottom of this issue. Another issue is that the CPU fan is running at full speed almost continuously.

I might try to install the 64 bit version - would that help at all?

I'm guessing the trouble is with the graphics driver - since the kernel seems to be happy when running in recovery mode.

Any help or suggestions appreciated.

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actionparsnip (andrew-woodhead666) said : 		#1

When you say you upgraded from Natty to Precise, what steps did you take? How did you do it?

Thanks

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Angus Kerr (angus-tropical) said : 		#2

I did a fresh install, side by side.

So, I can boot into either system. Natty still works great, Precise is very broken.

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actionparsnip (andrew-woodhead666) said : 		#3

What desktops have you tried?
Natty is EOL in October.

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Angus Kerr (angus-tropical) said : 		#4

you mean, am I running Precise on another machine.

Answer, yes, but a mythbuntu variety.

but, transplanting this drive into another laptop, and booting the OS on that, no problems.

I'm going to install the 64 bit version over and see what that does.

It's not the first time I have had stability problems with the AMD 64 / Radeon combination.
But this takes the biscuit.

If you have any other suggestions, I am quite comfortable running terminal commands, and I am able to mount flash drives etc, from the console, so it might be worthwhile looking through a few logs (if you can suggest which) to determine exactly what caused the crash.

And I don't mind fiddling. I've backed up all the data, so I don't mind breaking it completely.

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Angus Kerr (angus-tropical) said : 		#5

Still wouldn't mind some suggestions on this one....

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actionparsnip (andrew-woodhead666) said : 		#6

You could try installing xfce4 package and using that instead of The Gnome/Unity session.

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Angus Kerr (angus-tropical) said : 		#7

Thanks for the suggestion.

Do you think that unity is the problem? The 11.04 runs no problems. It seems to be that whatever changed in the kernel and video driver since 11.04, broke unity. I'm not a big fan of it, but XFCE is quite light by comparison.

Will let you know if I have success.

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Angus Kerr (angus-tropical) said : 		#8

Well, I did say I would report back.

Same result, same instability with xfce and Unity 2D.

I'm guessing it's a problem involving X, video driver and kernel combination.

As to pinpointing it, I don't know

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Angus Kerr (angus-tropical) said : 		#9

Seems to be a problem with the newest kernel, 3.2.0-29-generic-pae

Booting up with previous kernels, e.g. 3.2.0-27-generic-pae, the system is stable.

Giving MintLinux 13 Cinnamon 64 bit a try now, that seems to have the stability I want, however, it may break when the kernel is upgraded. We shall see. Hopefully the 64 bit kernel works better with AMD hardware, since it was designed around it.

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actionparsnip (andrew-woodhead666) said : 		#10

Why not try 64bit Ubuntu then..... Mint support is separate to Ubuntu's

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Kent Bankhead (ki4asq) said : 		#11

I am also having screen freezes in 12.04. I am using an HP Pavilion with AMD Turion64x2. I can log in just fine; however, when I get on-line and browse, my screen freezes. The only way to get out of that screen is a hard reset (turning the computer off) then rebooting. The cursor freezes, too, but occasionally if I hit the CTR-ALT-Delete combination, it frees up the cursor but the cursor has no effect on anything on the screen.

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Kent Bankhead (ki4asq) said : 		#12

I am also having screen freezes in 12.04. I am using an HP Pavilion with AMD Turion64x2. I can log in just fine; however, when I get on-line and browse, my screen freezes. The only way to get out of that screen is a hard reset (turning the computer off) then rebooting. The cursor freezes, too, but occasionally if I hit the CTR-ALT-Delete combination, it frees up the cursor but the cursor has no effect on anything on the screen.

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gali (jeangali) said : 		#13

I've asked this question as I'm also having freezes : https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+question/236556

Can you help with this problem?

Provide an answer of your own, or ask Angus Kerr for more information if necessary.

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