Why does linux freeze on my system?

[OzyOly]

Hey there. I'm fairly new to linux, but I really like it. We use it all the time at uni for my course and it's required for some parts of it.

At the moment I'm having to us nxdesktop to use a virtual gnome environment on my department's servers from my uni room.

This has it's advantages but also it's disadvantages, one being it's really sluggish because the part of the uni where I live has old networking equipment and I can only connect at 10Mbps to the server maximum.

I have tried to install linux on my pc before but with little success. Not at actaully getting it on my system, but because it freezes.

It started with Ubuntu. It freezes on the live cd install, so I installed it via the text based install. Everything is fine. Untill I run it. It can go for an hour and be fine, or it can happen at start up, but it freezes. It's a complete lockup of my system, the mouse and keyboard wont respond and I can't get out of x and back to the console by using ctrl + alt + backspace. I have to hard reset.

I have tried other flavours too, I've tried slackware 12.0 but didn't realised untill the end of the install that they have droped gnome in favour of KDE, not that I have anything against kde, I just prefer gnome.

I have tried debian which didn't freeze on me but it somehow managed to mess up my windows install with it's boot loader which even fixmbr in the windows recover console couldn't fix.

At the moment I have fedora on which, like ubuntu, freezes.

I have no idea why this is, there is nothing in the system logs, it just locks up.
I have run mem test and my memory is fine, and my pc hasn't frozen in xp mce05 (my primary os) in months.

I really like linux and want it for my course, but I can't use it because of this fault.
My specs are in my sig, but I thought I'd add that I'm partitioning my HD before the install using partition magic pro, I have created a 50gb ext3 partition and a 2gb swap partition and select these on the linux's installers.


Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks guys.

 

[Rich43]

Now that is odd.. Linux has been proved to be stable on many systems, you must be some strange special case

It must be some hardware problem or incompatibility, Could you post the output of lspci please?
Also, what motherboard you have?
Also, how are you connected to the internet on Linux?

I have some knowledge of driver problems on Linux.

 

[OzyOly]

Sorry about such a late reply. I had a programming project all last week and it was killing me, haha.

oliver@powerpc:~$ lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 82975X Memory Controller Hub (rev c0)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82975X PCI Express Root Port (rev c0)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) High Definition Audio Controller (rev 01)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 01)
00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 2 (rev 01)
00:1c.4 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801GR/GH/GHM (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 5 (rev 01)
00:1c.5 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801GR/GH/GHM (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 6 (rev 01)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 01)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 01)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 01)
00:1d.3 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI Controller #4 (rev 01)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 01)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 PCI Bridge (rev e1)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801GB/GR (ICH7 Family) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 01)
00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) IDE Controller (rev 01)
00:1f.2 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801GB/GR/GH (ICH7 Family) SATA IDE Controller (rev 01)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) SMBus Controller (rev 01)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc R580 [Radeon X1900 XT] (Primary)
01:00.1 Display controller: ATI Technologies Inc R580 [Radeon X1900 XT] (Secondary)
03:00.0 Multimedia video controller: Micronas Semiconductor Holding AG Unknown device 0720
04:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168B PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet controller (rev 01)
05:00.0 SATA controller: JMicron Technologies, Inc. JMicron 20360/20363 AHCI Controller (rev 02)
06:01.0 Multimedia audio controller: Creative Labs SB0400 Audigy2 Value
06:03.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): VIA Technologies, Inc. IEEE 1394 Host Controller (rev 80)
oliver@powerpc:~$

Is the output of the command you gave me.

And my linux install is connected to my uni's internet through a proxy, but I can access updates, it's just it freezes after a short while so I can never install them all.

The unknown device would be my tv card and that audio device is wrong, I have an Audigy 4 card, not Audigy 2. Also, it may be irrelevant, but when linux freezes, one RAM module is near full, the other is stuck on half activity (activity leds on my ram).

Thanks.

 

[Chaos]

Sounds like some kind of hardware issue, have you tried PcLinuxOS ?
Its now the number 1 distro on distrowatch and is ment to be good for beginners.

 

[OzyOly]

Thanks guys, I've solved it now.

All I did was reflash the bios and clear the cmos. It must have been a setting in there that linux didn't like. Haha.

Either way it seems much more stable now, it's not frozen (yet) so it's a good sign at least.