[ubuntu-uk] Problems with a freezing machine: All kernels in 12.04 and 13.04

[James Morrissey]

Dear all,

I am wondering if someone can help me with a major problem that i have been
having in Ubuntu, pertaining to a notoriously hard to diagnose issue of
random freezing.

The problem started in 13.04, which would freeze randomly, from the day i
installed it. I persisted with the issue for a while, hoping that it would
work itself out with subsequent kernel updates and as 13.04 was patched.
Unfortunately 2 months in i was still losing work to random freezes.

I thus found myself with a free weekend and so decided to downgrade to
12.04 which had worked for me previously. Frustratingly however, i found
that the problem now manifest there as well (there had been no problem in
12.10 previously).

A system freeze appears to happen at random, although it is possibly
related to having the machine on battery power. When it happens I can't
input anything, and if there is a song playing it skips. Only way out is a
hard reboot.

I remain on 12.04, 64 bit. I have updated my bios, and run memtest86. The
latter found no errors and the former has not improved things. The machine
is a Lenovo x131e, Intel, with integrated graphics and broadcom wireless.

I have tried filling a bug
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/1174275, but got stuck
as i could not properly test the upstream kernel as wireless would not
work.

The fact that there was a wireless problem on Broadcom BCM43228 and that
the freeze appears to correlate with having the machine on battery power (i
am still testing this) means that i thought it might be a problem with
powersave on the wireless card. There were a number of posts about this but
the general solution seemed to be to turn off the powersave option on the
card (http://robertbeal.com/1248/ubuntu-10101104-freezing-battery-power). I
did this to no avail as i still got a freeze when the machine was on
battery power.

I have also tried posting this problem on the forums (
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2166195), providing a list or
kernel errors that i get after a freeze. Understanding this list is beyond
my ability, so i don't know where to start. I haven't had much luck with
anyone there.

At this point i am not sure what else to do. I don't know how to diagnose
the problem any further as many forums simply say that analysing a system
freeze is difficult. This is a bit of a massive bug for me as random system
freezes really interrupt with my daily work.

I'd love to get this resolved, or at least work out what the problem is so
that i can get it reported. Ideally i'd have 13.04 working, but will settle
for 12.04.

If anyone can give me any advice on what steps to take to work out what the
problem is, i would really appreciate it.

Thanks,

James.
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