Unexpected freezes in Maverick

[Franz Waldmüller]

Hi Carsten,

Am 2010-11-29 09:23, schrieb Carsten Agger:
> I'm using Maverick Meerkat on an old(-ish) MSI Megabook S271 with an old
> Radeon Xpress graphics card onboard.
>
> Recently (yesterday, or day before) the system has started freezing
> unexpectedly - no cursor movement, no reaction to hotkey combinations,
> nothing. Only pressing the power button helps.
>
Do the Sys-Rq keys still work?
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=617349
> It might be the mother board getting old/doing strange things, but
> perhaps it might also be the system ...? It seems to be associated with
> high system load, especially opening programs. After a reboot I can't
> find anything suspicious in the logs.
>
> Does anyone know how I continue from here in an attempt to diagnose the
> problem? I'd really like to know if there's a kernel bug or something
> that causes the freeze, as it's causing me to lose work right now.
>
You could try to run an older ubuntu version of which you know worked.
But if sys rq keys don't work I suspect a hardware error.

Last week I experienced freezes on a machine too and tried 4 different 
kernels. Finally I discoverd that either the IDE-Port or the IDE-cable 
was broken. (Attached my dvd drive to another IDE-Port and everything works)

Franz