unresponsive when expanding file tree

How long have you waited for it, before rebooting?

Does Ctrl+Alt+F1 do anything? When you press Caps Lock, Number Lock, or Scroll Lock, does the light on the keyboard come on? Does Ctrl+Alt+Backspace do anything? How about Ctrl+Alt+Delete?

Does it freeze under any other situations? In particular, can you expand the directory elsewhere in the file system?

Did you install in the usual way (where you boot from the CD and install Ubuntu to take up the entire disk, or to be alongside an existing operating system), or did you install Ubuntu with the Wubi installer *inside* an existing Windows system?

I waited 5 minutes and still no response. The mouse pointer moves around the screen normally but has no response with clicking on anything. Ctrl+Alt+F1 does nothing; Caps Lock, Scroll Lock do nothing; Number Lock makes the indicator light go on and off; Ctrl+Alt+Backspace does nothing; Ctrl+Alt+Delete does nothing.

I haven't had the system lock anywhere else but have not used it much yet.

Ubunti is installed to use the entire disk.

Alan Detwiler

The system locks up at random locations when expanding the directory tree or selecting files. If I try to get it to lock up, it usually only takes 30 seconds or so of clicking on files or directories at random to get it to lock.

The lockup problem also happens while web browsing. Same symptoms.

What do I do, reinstall Ubuntu again?

This seems like this situation may be arising from a hardware problem, rather than a software problem. It seems that your computer locks up occasionally when the hard drive is being accessed.

Has this occurred since you first installed Ubuntu, or only for (the more recent) part of the time since you installed it? Did you previously run some other operating system on your computer? Did that operating system freeze?

Has your computer underwent any events that would suggest possible damage to the hardware? For example, has it been dropped recently?

Please open the file /var/log/messages, copy its entire contents to the clipboard, and paste it at http://pastebin.ubuntu.com, then click Paste! and provide the URL here. That may reveal information about the cause of the freezing.

I pasted in var/log/messages at pastebin.ubuntu.com.

The locking problem has occurred from since Ubuntu was first installed. Previously the computer had Windlows XP and did not have the problem then. The computer hasn't been dropped. It does have a CD drive with a cable that is damaged and may be not reliable. I've only used the CD drive to install Ubuntu and that was the first installation. The second installation of Ubuntu was from a download from Conanical.

When installing XP, a screen ask for third party drivers and I provided SATA drivers that the motherboard manual states should be installed. Since Ubuntu did not make that request, I did not install those drivers. There is nothing plugged into the SATA ports on the motherboard. The solid state drive is SATA plugged into a PCI card with a SATA port on the card. Should I install the SATA drivers? How do I do that?

Please post a link to the text at http://pastebin.ubuntu.com. It is not possible for me to find it without you providing the link. If you don't have the link either, you'll have to post it again.

It's likely the SATA controller is supported by drivers built into Ubuntu. If not, it's very unlikely that installing drivers for it in Ubuntu would help this problem (and the drivers would have to be Linux drivers, not the Windows drivers that likely shipped with the motherboard). It's not particularly likely that this problem is being caused by the SATA controller, but of course since you don't have anything plugged into it, you could disable it in the BIOS to see.

Oh...... I though you meant to put a link with the var/log/messages text at pastebin.ubuntu.com

http://pastebin.ubuntu.com/575716/

I could not find any bios settings to disable SATA. I don't know what a few of the bios settings are, but none of those have the word SATA or the words serial advanced technology attachment.

The problem is probably not SATA-related, so I wouldn't worry about not being able to disable that in the BIOS.

What video card do you have? Also, please open a Terminal window, run the command "lspci; lsmod" (without the quotes), then copy all the text from the Terminal to the clipboard and paste it here.

alan@alan-KT600-8237:~$ lspci; lsmod
00:00.0 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8377 [KT400/KT600 AGP] Host Bridge (rev 80)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8237/VX700 PCI Bridge
00:08.0 Mass storage controller: Silicon Image, Inc. SiI 3512 [SATALink/SATARaid] Serial ATA Controller (rev 01)
00:0a.0 Network controller: RaLink RT2561/RT61 802.11g PCI
00:0c.0 Communication controller: Agere Systems LT WinModem (rev 02)
00:0f.0 RAID bus controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VIA VT6420 SATA RAID Controller (rev 80)
00:0f.1 IDE interface: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C586A/B/VT82C686/A/B/VT823x/A/C PIPC Bus Master IDE (rev 06)
00:10.0 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 81)
00:10.1 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 81)
00:10.2 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 81)
00:10.3 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 81)
00:10.4 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. USB 2.0 (rev 86)
00:11.0 ISA bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8237 ISA bridge [KT600/K8T800/K8T890 South]
00:11.5 Multimedia audio controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8233/A/8235/8237 AC97 Audio Controller (rev 60)
00:12.0 Ethernet controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT6102 [Rhine-II] (rev 78)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV34 [GeForce FX 5200] (rev a1)
Module Size Used by
binfmt_misc 6599 1
snd_via82xx 20140 2
nouveau 517274 2
snd_wavefront 33066 0
snd_cs4236 25734 0
snd_ac97_codec 99227 1 snd_via82xx
snd_wss_lib 22074 2 snd_wavefront,snd_cs4236
ac97_bus 1014 1 snd_ac97_codec
arc4 1165 2
snd_opl3_lib 8850 2 snd_wavefront,snd_cs4236
snd_hwdep 5040 2 snd_wavefront,snd_opl3_lib
snd_pcm 71475 4 snd_via82xx,snd_cs4236,snd_ac97_codec,snd_wss_lib
rt61pci 18996 0
crc_itu_t 1383 1 rt61pci
rt2x00pci 6029 1 rt61pci
snd_mpu401 5123 0
ttm 56633 1 nouveau
snd_page_alloc 7120 3 snd_via82xx,snd_wss_lib,snd_pcm
snd_mpu401_uart 5661 4 snd_wavefront,snd_via82xx,snd_cs4236,snd_mpu401
rt2x00lib 27275 2 rt61pci,rt2x00pci
snd_seq_midi 4588 0
led_class 2633 1 rt2x00lib
drm_kms_helper 30200 1 nouveau
snd_rawmidi 17783 3 snd_wavefront,snd_mpu401_uart,snd_seq_midi
mac80211 231959 2 rt2x00pci,rt2x00lib
snd_seq_midi_event 6047 1 snd_seq_midi
ppdev 5556 0
snd_seq 47174 2 snd_seq_midi,snd_seq_midi_event
snd_timer 19067 4 snd_wss_lib,snd_opl3_lib,snd_pcm,snd_seq
snd_seq_device 5744 4 snd_opl3_lib,snd_seq_midi,snd_rawmidi,snd_seq
drm 168092 4 nouveau,ttm,drm_kms_helper
cfg80211 144694 2 rt2x00lib,mac80211
via_agp 5322 1
i2c_viapro 5777 0
snd 49038 18 snd_wavefront,snd_via82xx,snd_cs4236,snd_ac97_codec,snd_wss_lib,snd_opl3_lib,snd_hwdep,snd_pcm,snd_mpu401,snd_mpu401_uart,snd_rawmidi,snd_seq,snd_timer,snd_seq_device
ns558 3068 0
i2c_algo_bit 5168 1 nouveau
gameport 9327 3 snd_via82xx,ns558
eeprom_93cx6 1345 1 rt61pci
parport_pc 26058 1
shpchp 29886 0
agpgart 32011 3 ttm,drm,via_agp
soundcore 880 1 snd
lp 7342 0
parport 31492 3 ppdev,parport_pc,lp
via_rhine 19038 0
usbhid 36882 0
mii 4425 1 via_rhine
pata_via 7332 0
sata_sil 7035 2
sata_via 7344 0
floppy 54311 0
hid 67742 1 usbhid
alan@alan-KT600-8237:~$

It's a NVidia 5200 128 MB/128 bit AGP

Perhaps this is a problem with the nouveau video driver. Would you be willing to install and use the proprietary Nvidia driver for your video card? If so, you can install it in System > Administration > Additional Drivers. You may also need to uninstall the nouveau driver, which you can do by removing the package called xserver-xorg-video-nouveau. (See https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BinaryDriverHowto/Nvidia for more information.)

If you're willing to use the proprietary Nvidia driver, then after installing it, restart your computer, see whether or not the problem went away, and then please report the results here.

The propietary driver has now been installed. I uninstalled nouveau. So far, the problem seems to be gone. I tried to get the system to become unresponsive by expanding the file tree, selecting files, collapsing the tree, and repeating for a couple of minutes. Before changing the driver, usually 30 seconds of that would cause the problem to occur.
I'll post and update here in a couple of days so you'll know more for sure if the problem is definitely fixed.

Thanks much,
Alan Detwiler

I'm glad it seems to be working. Please do post again after a couple days.

The computer has not locked up since installing the proprietary video driver. It's been two days now and I have used the computer several hours per day.

Thanks for solving the problem,
Alan Detwiler