jhipkiss Posted March 16, 2004 Report Share Posted March 16, 2004 I've recently installed Mandrake 9.2 on my main machine, however every so often everything just freezes and the only way out is to hit the reset button!!! Does anyone have any ideas on how to start trouble shooting this? It doesn't have any recognisable pattern nor is it liked to running any particular software, this problem has no prejudices!!!! It is however making the machine unuseable, as I can probably only work for 10 or may be 20 minutes before it all locks up! H E L P!!!!! Thanks Jonathan Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sttroopers Posted March 16, 2004 Report Share Posted March 16, 2004 Are you running an nvidia graphics card with the official drivers? I was having similar issues until I disabled "agp fast write" in my BIOS. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
neutro Posted March 16, 2004 Report Share Posted March 16, 2004 Just for the record, when your experience a freeze, the proper course of action is: 1. Try to restart the X server by hitting ctrl-alt-backspace 2. Try to switch to another virtual console by hitting ctrl-alt-Fn, where n is 1 to 6; if you are able to do so, you can login and kill the process which locks up your system 3. If this doesn't work, the next thing to try is to login remotely if your computer has a ssh server running or something similar 4. If all this fail, hit alt-sysrq-S,U,B (without letting go of alt-sysrq). Sysrq is the print screen key. Those key sequences go directly to the kernel: alt-sysrq-S syncs all your drives; alt-sysrq-U unmounts all mounted filesystems; alt-sysrq-B is an immediate reboot. Doing alt-sysrq-S,U,B is much more clean than hitting reset and will work 95% of the time. 5. If event alt-sysrq-S,U,B fails, that means the kernel itself is not responding. Hit reset. You know, you're not the only one with random freezing of Mandrake 9.2. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raysr Posted March 17, 2004 Report Share Posted March 17, 2004 Having the same trouble, how do you get into BIOS? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jhipkiss Posted March 18, 2004 Author Report Share Posted March 18, 2004 Just for the record, when your experience a freeze, the proper course of action is: 1. Try to restart the X server by hitting ctrl-alt-backspace 2. Try to switch to another virtual console by hitting ctrl-alt-Fn, where n is 1 to 6; if you are able to do so, you can login and kill the process which locks up your system 3. If this doesn't work, the next thing to try is to login remotely if your computer has a ssh server running or something similar 4. If all this fail, hit alt-sysrq-S,U,B (without letting go of alt-sysrq). Sysrq is the print screen key. Those key sequences go directly to the kernel: alt-sysrq-S syncs all your drives; alt-sysrq-U unmounts all mounted filesystems; alt-sysrq-B is an immediate reboot. Doing alt-sysrq-S,U,B is much more clean than hitting reset and will work 95% of the time. 5. If event alt-sysrq-S,U,B fails, that means the kernel itself is not responding. Hit reset. You know, you're not the only one with random freezing of Mandrake 9.2. Those are some top tips, I didn't know any of that. Thanks The first option Ctrl-Alt-Backspace worked after my last freeze. So at least we now know that it's X-Server that's freezing. Still don't kow why though. I guess it's my video card (NVIDIA GeForce4 MX440) but I don't know what to do about it, www.nvidia.com seems to be constantly down :-( Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thinkliberty Posted March 18, 2004 Report Share Posted March 18, 2004 Having the same trouble, how do you get into BIOS? To get in to your BIOS hit the del, f1 or f8 key (depending on the motherboard you are using) while your computer is counting RAM at boot time. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jhipkiss Posted March 19, 2004 Author Report Share Posted March 19, 2004 Are you running an nvidia graphics card with the official drivers? I was having similar issues until I disabled "agp fast write" in my BIOS. Thanks for that tip but it already is switched off. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DragonMage Posted March 19, 2004 Report Share Posted March 19, 2004 We need to find out what hardware you are using. Also, check whether it is only X that hangs (which unfortunately, also hangs monitor, keyboard and mouse, however everything else works). So enable ssh service, and when it hangs.. use another computer to ssh into the problem computer and see if everything else works. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jhipkiss Posted March 23, 2004 Author Report Share Posted March 23, 2004 I took this tip from alt.os.linux.gentoo: >I've had some luck playing with the nVidia AGP settings - edit your XF86Config > >Section "Device" > Identifier "NVIDIA GeForce" > Driver "nvidia" > #Option "NvAGP" "0" # disable agp > Option "NvAGP" "1" # use nvidia agp > #Option "NvAGP" "2" # use agpgart > #Option "NvAGP" "3" # try 2 than 1 > #VideoRam 32768 > # Insert Clocks lines here if appropriate >EndSection Everything now works fine! Or at least does so far!!!!! Thanks for all your help and and I hope this tip helps someone else. Jonathan Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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