I tried to watch a flash video on full screen; then the screen went black with some glitches and then my laptop suddenly shut down. I couldn’t start opensuse back again, the screen goes black and freezes. I tried restarting in windows, and it freezes too. However, opensuse in failsafe mode works.
After that, i tried reinstalling opensuse. This time, i can start normally, but after a while, the screen shows some glitch (the updater applet looked wrong) and freezes. Windows isn’t loading either, but opensuse failsafe mode is still working ok.
I guess it is a hardware problem (since windows also crashes). However, i would like some help to run “diagnostics” to my system.
My graphic card is a nvidia 8400 gs, and i am running opensuse 11.3
I was using the nvidia driver i found in opensuse-community (installed quite a long time ago); however, after i reinstalled, i was using the default driver. It is possible that my kernel was updated a couple of days ago (but i am not really sure of that)
I can’t help with the graphic card diagnostics, … however reference this:
…
Its relatively easy to check this. Simply type in a terminal:
rpm -qa --last
and that will give a chronological list of all rpms that are installed on your system currently.
If that scrolls by your screen too quickly (which it is likely to do) then redirect the output to a text file with:
rpm -qa --last > my-installed-rpms.txt
and read the text file ‘my-installed-rpms.txt’ with a text editor. You can tell then quickly if you recently updated your kernel.
Given your graphics are looking flaky, you may wish to install ‘mc’ (midnight commander) application that can be run with the PC in full screen text mode (ie run level 3). mc has a great / easy to use editor, that is easy to us, and can be run to view log files and other files (and even edit text files) with the PC in a text mode. Its very useful when one is having graphic problems.
It always happen when you watch video? If you do nothing but booting the OS, did it freeze? Is it an old laptop? Maybe related to the temperature of the CPU…
When the system is on, check the temperature with this command :
sensors
You have to install lmsensors first if the command return an error.
Mmm, i installed over it, so i can’t check it now, :S. I remember virtualbox asking for recompiled driver, but since i don’t use it very often, the kernel update could have been some time ago.
Failsafe mode works, so i have no problems running that.
What i would really like to know is if it is possible that a software (drivers/…) problem in opensuse can mess with the graphic card in windows. Because after the initial problem, it crashes both systems; so i guess it must be the hardware (with would be fairly difficult to solve). But if it is software related, maybe i can i find a solution.
The laptop has 3 years. It happens when booting, and i don’t think it is related to the temperature (it doesn’t crash in failsafe mode / i wasn’t using anything intensive when it crashed / i didn’t find the laptop specially hot) However, i’ll check a bit.
You said it freezes in windows too, so it is hardware related for sure. Don’t forget that running graphical applications is more power intensive than running in failsafe text mode.
Have you checked your HDD? Check the integrity just to be sure there is no major errors or sectors damaged.
Well, failsafe is graphical… although i guess it bypasses the graphic card (it runs in 640x480, or sth like that)
I am looking a bit deeper into the overheating; once i had problems with an overheating CPU, but not with an overheating GPU. I am bit surprised since it has come suddenly; booting shouldn’t be too intensive for the GPU, but maybe some piece of dust has got right there and i overheats really quickly.
Now, i would only need to open my laptop and clean the dust, but that seems a really hard thing to do… (Couldn’t manufacturers make it simple?.. sigh)
Right now it crashes while booting windows. I can boot opensuse, but freezes in 5 minutes if you use it. And i can boot opensuse in failsafe mode (with GUI, resolution 640x480), and it seems OK.
Right now, i am reinstalling the original windows, to see if anything happens. But i am afraid it is a hardware problem, and i have little else to do.
The difficulty here is to know which hardware is faulty. We can guess it may be related to the GPU.
In failsafe mode of openSUSE, try installing lmsensors and do a sensors-detect to have it detect your GPU temperature. Maybe you can find some clue there.
Reinstalled the laptop with factory settings, it showed glitches then crashed.
Tried once again, it showed glitches, but this time a window appeared that said something along the lines:
“Nvidia Driver XXXXX crashed but successfully restarted”
Now it looks fine.
Right now i am updating windows. I’ll install opensuse after that and i’ll see if everything is working.
My graphic card is welded to the motherboard, so i can’t change it.
Right now, i can work in failsafe mode, BTW, sensor tells about a temperature as low as 57ºC when i booted, and as high as 95ºC while running a program that uses 100% CPU (do{}while(1)). Still, the fan wasn’t at maximum speed (i’ve heard it louder during my laptop’s life, when it was dirtier).
I was surprised to be able to boot windows again, but i guess that there is a routine that makes the GPU crash; and maybe after the update, a new windows effect or something crashes it. Again, it happened the same in opensuse, freshly installed, it doesn’t crash right away; but you have to use is a bit till it crashes.
I hope that failsafe remains usable… but it seems that it is a hardware problem which i can’t do anything about.
