Ubuntu getting locked up

[NoOp]

On 03/24/2010 07:44 PM, Chuck Kuecker wrote:
> Just wanted to let everyone know the final outcome on this problem. I 
> removed the screensaver packages completely, and the problem went away.
> 
> Did some more research. I was running an ATI Radeon X 800XL video card 
> that my son had in the machine for his games. Turns out this card is no 
> longer supported in Ubuntu 9.10.

Cite please?

I find this hard to imagine.. my old ATI cards work just fine in 9.10:

           *-display
                description: VGA compatible controller
                product: Rage 128 Pro Ultra TF
                vendor: ATI Technologies Inc
as an example. Note: I've older & they work find w/9.10 and 10.04.

> 
> So, I pulled the video card out of my old Linux box, and put it in this 
> one. Works fine. Reinstalled the screensaver packages, and set up the 
> engine animation again - I just watched it switch over to the animation, 
> which ran at the correct speed, and the machine recovered with mouse 
> movement. No evidence of anything locking up.

Perhaps you just needed to clean out the bad card seatings/connections
in the system. You'd be surprised how time, temp, dust, et al takes it's
toll on a machine. Simply pulling the card & reinstalling into that, or
another system may have wiggled a connection on the card to sort things
out. That said; screensavers are notorious for locking/crapping out
systems. I recall in the edgy/gutsy days where some screensavers would
lock my system just on test. I suspect that the same buggy screensavers
are still there, I've just elected to skip any/all of them & let the
screen go dark when it times out.

> 
> The only unresolved question is - why did it work for a couple of weeks 
> after I upgraded to 9.10, before starting to act up? It's almost like 
> the card had a memory of how long it had run, and when it reached a 
> certain time, it went nuts.

Perhaps you weren't running the same applications at the same time?