Desktop crash?

I’ve been having some trouble now for a while that I can’t figure out and I really don’t know where to go from here. My desktop crashes I guess, all the time 2 or 3 times a day. It seems to always happen when I’m using Firefox. A flash video on any website crashes me, but not right away, sometimes 10-15 mins in, or a few short videos. It happens when I play WoW, but only when firefox is running. It happens with hardware acceleration On or Off, if hardware acceleration is on, red and blue are backwards so everyone looks like a smurf. Sometimes this also occurs when watching a avi or mp4. When it crashes, everything stops and the screen goes blank, then the log in screen will come on. When I log back in, (Im on Gnome btw) the top left where it says activities, next to it whatever you have open there is the tab with its name that you can close whatever is open, well when I mouse over it, theres all these black pixels in a here and there, within a inch or two from the button. Sorry I am trying to describe this the best I can.

Any help with this would be so awesome!

On 07/15/2012 09:36 PM, digitalsedition wrote:
> Any help with this would be so awesome!

what operating system and version are you using?
what desktop environment and version?
have you the ability to monitor CPU and GPU temperature?

tell about your hardware, how old is it…when was the last time you
blew out the dust?

what graphics card/driver are you using?

if you go to this page, what version of flash does it say you are using:
http://www.adobe.com/products/flash/about/

note! i did not suggest you to update flash from that page! not at all…


dd

opensuse 12.1
kernel 3.1.10-1.16-desktop
gnome 3.2.1
flash:You have version 11,2,202,236 installed
Nvidia 9800 gt ee
hardware worked fine with 11-11.4 for 1.5-2years
no dust system is kept clean, have case and window fans as well.

I dont know…
Thanks for helping.

Hi there digitalsedition.

I seem to have a rather similar set up as yours. openSUSE 12.1 64-bit, running the same kernel, having an Nvidia 450 GTS GPU (running proprietary driver), and GNOME 3.4.1 as my desktop environment. Can’t say I’ve encountered problems like this though, except the smurf thing when hardware acceleration is enabled.

Consider running Firefox from a terminal like this:

firefox -P

Create a new profile, and see if the problem persists. Or you could try resetting Firefox to its factory default state.

Run

/sbin/lspci -k

and look for output similar to this:

06:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation GF106 [GeForce 450 GTS] (rev a1)
    Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Device 837a
    Kernel driver in use: nvidia

Let us know what driver you are using. And if you’re not using the nvidia driver, the SDB:NVIDIA the hard way article from the openSUSE wiki comes highly recommended.

Just a side note really, but does this mean “zypper dup” from openSUSE 11.0 all the way up to 12.1?

On 07/16/2012 06:06 AM, back space wrote:
> does this mean “zypper dup” from openSUSE
> 11.0 all the way up to 12.1?

that is an excellent question (along with the graphic driver question i
also asked)

additionally, now with the new info given i’d ask digitalsedition to
please show us the terminal input/output from


zypper lr -d
cat /etc/SuSE-release
/sbin/lspci -v | grep -i display
/sbin/lspci -nnk | grep VGA -A2

copy/paste the in/output back to this thread using the instructions
here: http://goo.gl/i3wnr


dd

On 07/15/2012 11:16 PM, digitalsedition wrote:
> hardware worked fine with 11-11.4 for 1.5-2years

wait a second: since openSUSE 11.0 came out in June of 2008, and went
non-supported in June of 2010, either the hardware is over two years
old, or what?

reason for the question:

  1. power supply units (PSU) age out over time and a weak or failing PSU
    can cause the crash symptom you describe

  2. excess heat can (will) cause crashes…and, CPU thermal paste also
    dries out with time and can cause a system which ran great last summer
    to fail this summer…

so, again: how old is your hardware? and lets add:
-has your hardware lived past its warranty period?
-does it have its original PSU? have you added more hard drives to the
system, or a more powerful/fast graphics card, or case
fans/lights/whatever? (all of these things will increase the output
requirements of the PSU, which may be more than it was ever designed
to produce)

and you didn’t answer: “have you the ability to monitor CPU and GPU
temperature?”

how about hard drive temperature, can/do you monitor those as well?

let me just close with this: the symptoms you describe might be caused
by either hardware or software problems…or both of those acting
together… so far i don’t have a clue if it is hardware OR
software…except i’m happy to see you are running the latest flash
offered by the openSUSE repos for 12.1, and my first instinct is heat,
so maybe it is not ‘bad’ software, but rather ‘good’ software causing
more heat than the system can take this year…


dd