I have a Dell Inspiron 5100 with a 120 gig HD and a Gig of ram. I have recently installed Ubuntu Edgy and XP dual boot. I have been experiencing a lot of general instability. I'll list some of the problems I've been having below.

1. If I switch user or log out as one user and log in under a different one, within a minute my keyboard becomes unresponsive and I cannot run most programs. I also cannot bring up the screen to logout shutdown, etc. At this point I have to kill the power and reboot.

2. Just working along, sometimes surfing the web, or doing java development or using OpenOffice. I sometimes have my mouse lock up, or keyboard lock up or both and usually cannot reboot as in problem #1.

3. Sometimes but not always, if the screen saver is on for a long time, by screen blanks out and I cannot get it back.

4. My Network manager sometimes forgets how to reconnect to my wireless network. I wonder if this has something to do with hard reboots due to problems 1-3

I have spent countless hours getting Ubuntu configured with all the programs I like. Please don't tell me I have to reload (unless it's the truth of course).

Any ideas? Thanks for all your help!

Are you always on battery power when this happens? I have had problems with the power manager turning things off with messages such as 99% of battery remains (i.e. almost full, which is true), 2 minutes remaining (which is a bug), shutting down. I had to set preferences on the power mgr. to do nothing at low battery, which my bios takes care of anyhow.

Of course, your battery could actually be going bad and cause this type of problem.

On the wireless network mgr, are you using the gnome network mgr, and have you changed your security settings. I had some problems like you describe. I had to deny the program access to the keyring, and then reset the connection with the new security in order to work reliably. I doubt this is your problem, but worth a try.

Bob

Given the processor in this unit I would look at overheating first. Download this file http://www.geocities.co.jp/SiliconVa...310/mm0310.zip
and run it from Windows to see how hot your CPU is getting. You might need to tear it down and clean the heatsink assembly. (Or have it done) I have seen them get plugged SOLID.

If it turns out to not be temp related, download this ISO and burn it to cd and boot the machine off of it. This will test the memory.
http://www.memtest.org/download/1.70...+-1.70.iso.zip

These are probably the two most common causes of your symptons on this laptop, and most others.

Let us know what you find out.

James

I agree with the previous post about overheating. I do laptop and desktop support at a local university, and I have seen the radiator fins inside the Dimension 5100 get plugged solid with dust. The machine will become totally flaky when this happens.

The best way to get to it is to remove the cover above the keyboard and then the keyboard itself. You should then be able to get to the CPU heatsink and fan. Remove the fan to get access to the (probably) blocked radiator fins from the CPU heatsink.

This should be done periodically on ALL laptop systems IMO. I have seen the same behavior on other brands of laptops that worked fine after a proper cleaning to blow out accumulated dust from the cooling passages.