Computer randomly (it seems) has hard freezes and is nonresponsive until the next boot. That hasn’t been a big deal until I started using Suse. Right after I installed Suse as my second OS, I went back to 7 and put it to sleep when I was done. I think that GRUB got to my system before windows MBR did and screwed everything up. Since then, the hard freeze is accompanied by serious screen artifacts and a loss of video driver. Once that happens, no more boot for either OS. The only thing that works is to run the memory test from the Suse install DVD. After I run that and reboot, everything looks and runs fine. The hard freezes have been happening since a dog sent my computer for a short flight, but the video problems are new.
I was a linux virgin until three days ago and I’ve been doing nothing but crossing my fingers and hoping my lappy won’t freeze up again. Any ideas about the source of my problem? I suspect the motherboard. Also, why does doing a memory test help the video driver?
You have booted windows again? To take it out of sleep mode?
Funny thing is, this happened to me the other day. I don’t really use windows and had booted to it. I had to leave the PC and on return, turns out it had tried to sleep, only it didn’t seem to have done it quite properly and it wouldn’t wake. I rebooted manually and used Linux. Later I rebooted and went back to Windows and it booted as if it had been sleeping, took ages. Then I did a shutdown. After that all was well. But for me, Windows and Linux are using different HD’s.
Back to your problem, I doubt this even has suddenly had some effect on your Mobo.
Assuming you did get back and close down windows properly. Does Windows work OK?
On Wed, 07 Sep 2011 02:36:02 +0000, DavieKray wrote:
> I suspect the motherboard. Also, why does doing a memory test help the
> video driver?
I had a somewhat similar problem with hard freezes on my laptop after
replacing the system board; it turned out the replacement system board
was also bad.
The video going crazy is often (maybe even ‘usually’) an indicator of a
hardware fault. I wouldn’t say “always” because I have seen Dell laptop
video get a little screwy (looks like something “melting” upwards on the
screen when it happens) and that doesn’t seem to be hardware related - at
least, when I’ve had it happen, I can power off and back on and it’s fine
but the pattern isn’t particularly random).
Doing a memory test (with memtest86, presumably?) writes known patterns
to memory and may be leaving things in a state that the system board
isn’t able to do for some reason.