Debian etch crashing
 

About one months ago my comp started crashing for no apparent reason, sometimes several times a day. I have tried everything I can think off and could use some advice.

The crashing can happen anytime but don't seem to happen if I don't touch the mouse or keyboard.
I have checked the CPU and it's not overheating or anything.
Memtest freezes my machine completly, so I guess it could be memory.
I tried clocking down my memory but it didn't help.
Only thing I did before the crashing started was install kde.
I'm running Debian etch on a 2.6.16 kernel.
I use an AMD Athalon 64bit dual-core 3800+, 1G mem, nvidia graphics, msi mobo. I can get more spesific if you need.

Any hints would be helpfull.

You could try replacing your memory and see if that fixes it.

Also you could run memtest86+ and see if it really is your memory.

I've had bad memory before, and you don't have to touch the computer for it to crash, it just crashes whenever it tries to get at that bad RAM, and since the computer is still working even if you don't touch it, it can still try to access that RAM.

Another thing that throws me off the "bad RAM" theory is that you said the crashes can happen at any time, implying that you can get some use before it happens. In my case, I only had a minute at most before it crashed, most times it didn't even get a chance to get into X.

This might be a silly suggestion, but I will suggest it anyway. This happened to me using Debian Sid.

I prefer Xscreensaver to Gnome-screensaver, because Xscreensaver is more flexible. However, if "power management" is enabled in xscreensaver, everything would lock up when the monitor was to be put to sleep. I couldn't even SSH into the machine to restart it. By disabling the power management in Xscreensaver, it solved the problem.

I think that KDE requires Xscreensaver to be installed, and you said that you installed KDE just prior to this happening.

--Ian

I think it may have been my NVIDIA graphics drivers. Yesterday I updated from 1.0-9629 to 1.0-9631 and it have not crashed since. A few more days and I will be sure. It makes sense since I had to accualy do something that cused the screen to update. Sorry about not mentoning I had upgraded them I just remeberd myself.

Thanks for the helpfull replys, I was a bit worried for my ram there for a while.

EDIT: I'm sure the NVIDIA drivers was the problem now, 2 days up and no crashes.