Crashing with Dell

[Dennis_Drescher at sil.org]

I've been using Ubuntu for a couple months now on both a Dell Precision 
330 and a Latitude D610. Off and on I've had problems with what I'll call 
hard crashes. What I mean is that the machine completely locks up and will 
not allow me to take it down by going into a shell. The only way to 
recover is to power down. This obviously wreaks havoc on my file structure 
and I have to run fsck often to fix the partitions. The Latitude, which is 
running Ubuntu 5.0.4 (with the KDE desktop installed) locks up 
infrequently and it is hard to predict. The Precision 330 locks up several 
times a day. Sometimes while I'm typing or using the mouse, many times 
just while it is sits idle.

I've used Linux for several years now and have never had such an unstable 
system. I also run Kanotix on both machines in another partition and it 
can run all day long with no problems. I've also run checks on my hardware 
and I'm confident it is functioning okay. I'm thinking it might be a 
problem with X but I'm not sure what to do at this point. Can anyone give 
me some clues as to how to diagnose this? Thanks.

Regards,

Dennis