Sporadic freezes and frustration

[Rune Svendsen]

Just a thought here. A friend's computer with Ubuntu installed once
locked up in a similar manner you describe. I was unable to fix it and I
had to install Windows XP on the machine.
After installing XP I found out that an NTFS partition on the computer's
hard drive had been corrupted somehow. The Windows disk check would just
hang while checking the drive. I think somehow a loop had been created
on the partition making whatever tried to access it get stuck in this
loop (CHKDSK did anyway, perhaps ntfs-3g did as well).
So, to find out whether this indeed stems from a broken NTFS partition,
I'd do the following:

        1. If you don't even have an NTFS partition, ignore everything
        I've said :)
        
        2. Make sure no NTFS partitions at all are mounted automatically
        after logging in, to you make sure it's not the ntfs-3g driver
        hanging up the system.
        
I have no idea if this could be the cause of the problem, but I thought
that this might be possible after finding out about this on my friend's
computer, but I unfortunately never got the chance to test it out.

Regards,
Rune


> I recently reinstalled Ubuntu 9.04 after getting fed up with Windows
> and refusing to go to Windows 7. I have a pretty generic Acer 5100
> laptop with a 1.6Ghz processor and 3GB of memory.
> 
> For some reason, and this happens a lot, when I boot the system, the
> system will freeze as it's playing the startup sound and just stay in
> a fast loop where it froze playing that portion of the sound again and
> again. The only way to stop it is to force the machine off by holding
> down the power button. If I let it sit there, it will eventually
> change to a screen with strips going up and down but still the system
> is nonresponsive.
> 
> But this also happens when I am sometimes just working. The system
> will all of a sudden go to a screen with stripes and is totally
> nonresponsive. Again, the only way to regain control is to force it
> off and restart. Just now, I had to restart 4 times before I could get
> a usable computer again.
> 
> I'm almost at the point of reinstalling. But I thought I'd come here
> and ask for help first. Can anyone clue me in as to what might be
> going on?
> 
> Thanks in advance,
> Anthony
> 
>