Crashing with Dell

[Charles Malespin]

On Mon, 2005-08-22 at 10:24 -0500, Dennis_Drescher at sil.org wrote:
> 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
> 
> 


Dennis, I was having similar problems with a Dell Dimension
desktop(gnome, 5.04) and found that the problem was a Dell 1450 wirless
USB adapter that I was using.  As soon as I got rid of the wireless then
I no longer had freezes.  Are you using a Dell wireless card with your
laptop?  I dont know if this helped, but that was what was causing my
problems.  
Charles