hello i have a acer aspire 1680 laptop with 512mb ram and a 2200bg wireless network card with suse 12.1 installed now i did work some weeks with this suse instalation and had no major problems i did generate some data in this time and use the laptop as normaly to work all ok now i did try FVWM and i was trying to customize it, that is not the problem, i did change the configs serval times and reboot and more or less it did work but now… i had to reboot the computer by pressing the ON/OFF button on the laptop (i did this many times before without problems because i lost my shutdown menu while editing FVWM buttons from time to time while trying out things) the last time i did this i had open one instance of KWrite, one Window of Chromium, the FVWM button pannel and the FVWM console i hat to kill the laptop with the hardware button then it did reboot as normaly i did reopen all the windows KWrite, FVWM console and the FVWM buttons did start automaticaly with FVWM then i did open Chromium Chromium told me that it was not closed correctly the last time and did ask me if i like to load the lost session i did click on the yellow reload button then chromium did load the last tabs but did not stop loading (the tabs did stay white) while that did happen the cooler/fan in the laptop did speed up drasticaly the mouse did not move anymore nothing did move anymore for minutes (this did never happen before like that) so i did restart again with the hardware button suse did boot until a message did appear of wich the relevant part as i think was soft lockup cpu 0 stuck and some strange trace numbers (what ever this message means) now suse dont starts any more i cant enter any failsave because something about kernel and CPU doesent suport PAE or similar how can this happen? my 32bit suse did work for weeks and now my CPU is missing magicaly some functions? (i dont think so) and why is the normal boot process now stucking me into a soft lockup (out of nothing)? and much more interessting how can i fix this i am new to linux, i had already a adventure until i got my wireless to work and now after some happy weeks comes this out of nothing problem now i did boot with knoppix from CD and this is working well so i guess its not because the hardware the only thing i can guess is that the problem comes with a auto update 
so what did change today by update and how can i reverse it without being able to boot into suse? in the grub boot menu i did try all options and all options fail to get me into suse i also did try to press “e” while booting at any time because i did read strange postings about kernel and boot and i thoght that maybe if i try i will see something that gives me a hint, but nothing did happen with “e” so what can i do now? (i realy have had very hard times with suse, and i realy think about switching to a other linux, also if suse is the only linux that i boght some yeas ago with a suse book, i begin to think it was a stupid misinvestment)
So the bottom line it sounds like you have a disk partition who’s data is now corrupted. If you close all programs and exit to terminal, you might get away with a hard shut down, but at some point, it will get you. Lock ups are bad and I guess I would search the net for any fixes for your brand/model laptop and Linux. It is time in my opinion to reinstall openSUSE or any other Linux version you think you might have better luck with. I am not sure how you are online right now, but the openSUSE Live CD’s are a great way to see how openSUSE will work without really installing the software to your hard drive. Several different Linux version also have Live CD’s that you can try.
Thank You,
yeah it realy looks bad, and until now i did not find a fix or any light at the end of the tunnle … i guess i will spend now some howers on trying to rescue my 500k data (or so) and maybe after loosing my nerves i will give a try to a other distro, actualy i am on knoppix and that looks also cool … while i was waiting for your sad message i found allready a distrowatch site … maybe i find something that is more windows like (user friendly), maybe a distro where the failsave options work also if i dont have this PEA stuff on my CPU … i realy cant understand why suse did work on my laptop at the moment, i mean if suse works the failsave should work better but actualy it looks as suse was the only failsave and all other boot options just dont work because they cant handle my cpu… that is strange to me… i think on linux i should backup my data more frquently as it is not so stable as windows, on windows i could until now rescue every thing at every time in every bad or woerse situation … but on linux magic happens and i loose all my data that i have writen for my course … happily it was not very much so i can still remember all and rewrite it hopefuly quickly … maybe there is someone with a other quick solution idea else i will give up before tomorrow and spend some time on reinstalling
On 10/05/2012 03:46 AM, Gagel wrote:
> on linux magic happens and i loose all my data that i have writen
the magic is in your belief that shutting down with the hardware power
button is a good idea!
it is not.
anyone here could tell you that! by not fixing the problem which you
caused–“i lost my shutdown menu while editing FVWM buttons”, you [not
openSUSE and not Linux] set yourself up for disaster…
by the way, i know lots of folks who learned not to shut down Windows
with the power button either!!
–
dd