More help requested

[Cybe R. Wizard]

On Sun, 31 Oct 2010 03:22:57 -0500
Anthony Papillion <papillion at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hello Everyone,
> 
> I'm trying to troubleshoot an issue that's been going on for a while
> and I've yet to be able to figure it out - or even get a clue as to
> what might be going on.
> 
> First, here is my hardware:
> 
> Acer 5100 Laptop
> AMD Turon 64 X2 TL-50 Processor (1.6Ghz)
> 3GB RAM
> 120HD
> ATI Radeon XPress 1100
> Ubuntu Linux 10.04 LTS
> 
> Originally, I installed Ubuntu on the internal hard disk drive. I kept
> experiencing freezes with the screen filling with upright gray and
> black bars. At that point the computer would have to be manually
> rebooted by pressing and holding the power button.
> 
> After some poking around, I determined that there was a bad area of
> the internal hard disk drive and installed Ubuntu on a new, removable
> 120 Maxtor USB drive. Things seemed to work fine.
> 
> However, sometimes, and this regularly happens after a few minutes to
> a few hours of use, the system will stop responding.  The wifi signal
> locator will turn to a red circle with a horizontal "-" sign in it and
> when I click it, the entire thing is filled with little [][][][][]
> instead of text.
> 
> At that point, even though the mouse is still active, programs stop
> responding and the system must be rebooted by holding down the power
> key. Once rebooted, things will run fine for a while and then it will
> happen again.
> 
> I've looked at the different logs and, unless I simply don't know what
> to look for, I'm not seeing anything that would indicate a problem.
> I've logged the exact time the problem occured and looked through
> logs for anything happening at that time (in the ones that specify
> even times) and can't find anything.
> 
> This is driving me insane. My laptop is totally unreliable. As I write
> this, I'm not even sure I'll be able to send it. Can anyone point me
> in the right direction on what this might be and what I can do to
> find out the source of this problem?
> 
> Thank You,
> Anthony
> 
I'm no expert but it sounds to me like fully-loaded memory trying to
swap out to disk. You didn't mention your swap strategy.

Cybe R. Wizard
-- 
When Windows are opened the bugs come in.
	Winduhs