Killing a process when desktop hang

[Haines Brown]

I apologize for starting a long thread that ended up a hardware
problem.

I say this because I installed debian on another disk. That
installation fully completed because configuration with debian is done
from console rather than rely on the X server. Therefore the video
problem did not manifest itself until after installation configuration
was completed. But same problem with debian as with ubuntu (when I do
something a little demanding of video, both desktop and keyboard
hang).

So it looks like the video card, which I'll replace. I might add that
nearly all the hardware problems I've experienced in the last five
years have been with video (nVidia GeForce) cards.

Thanks for everyone's help and patience.

Haines Brown