First off: The program is not frozen. I do not need to know how to 'ps -A | grep name' and 'sudo kill PID' becase the program is still fully responsive and running as normal.

The X-window of a program is freezing up and no longer updating without me doing something to update another part of the screen. I get this problem with any program, not just games or any one specific application. It most frequently happens to Firefox (when I use flash or youtube) and Games (such as the one featured in the video link below). However, I've had it occur in konsole, Amarok, Kate, my desktop, my taskbar/plasmabar, VMWare Workstation, VMWare Viewer, Oracle VirtualBox, and more. I can't figure out how to web search this issue because if I use "freeze" or any word to describe what's going on, it gives me endless results of "application frozen" which is not my issue at all.

I do have nVidia drivers installed. If that's relevant at all.

Youtube of me recording my issue from my phone.

Long shot here but how much RAM do you have? could this be a swapping issue?

Like I said, that's a long shot.


Less of a long shot: have you looked at /var/log/Xorg.0.log ?

24GB of RAM, however I do not have a SWAP partition setup, because I don't come near using 24GB of RAM at any time. Would that be the problem? And if you think it may be the cause, what would you reccomend to use for the most minimal size of SWAP? I have 24GB for it to be used instead of having to use SWAP. So far, while running my Win7 VM, I've only hit 14GB of RAM at the highest, and that's while I was working on source code with Kate (which is a bit of a memory hog when you load 80 files into it).


Doing a tail on /var/log/Xorg.0.log to watch if anything comes up when it happens again. Will post if anything looks odd, but so far it's nothing but spam of:
[486562.761] (II) NVIDIA(GPU-0): Display (HP 2310 (DFP-2)) does not support NVIDIA 3D Vision
[486562.761] (II) NVIDIA(GPU-0): stereo.
[486562.761] (**) NVIDIA(0): Using HorizSync/VertRefresh ranges from the EDID for display
[486562.761] (**) NVIDIA(0): device HP 2310 (DFP-2) (Using EDID frequencies has been
[486562.761] (**) NVIDIA(0): enabled on all display devices.)

--

It occured again, and nothing new posted in the Xorg log.

No, I doubt swap is the issue if you have 24gb RAM. I have 16 and also have no issue. Wasn't sure about your box's specs.

Those don't look like the worst errors in the world to me. Are you running the latest/greatest nvidia driver available?

Probably not.. let me check my current, the latest avaliable (via repository), and latest avaliable (from nVidia).

I'll add in an edit once I find how to check my current one.

Currently on 319. That's highest avaliable via default repositories.
334 is highest from nVidia.

It would be worth a shot to upgrade the driver, unless someone else here has experienced the same issue and knows a better idea. It sounds quite unique to me.

1 members found this post helpful.

as with every single time, using the nvidia driver installer broke the desktop, I've only got terminal access now.

Making a new thread on fixing this.

Well, that issue is fixed now. It may take a day or two for me to get back on this. Usually after a reboot, it doesn't have any problems for a day or two.

Issue is still occuring.

Will try updating driver from x-updates

So.. nevermind updating the drivers, flat out, that isn't an option. I cannot get X to start on anything over the highest of 319.

Still fighting this issue. My taskbar is currently freezing up the most out of everything, I can only make use of it about 20-30% of the time and have adapted to not relying on it for anything at all. Though I think it's actually freezing, not just graphically non-responsive.
However, I am still getting programs that visually freeze and I have to restart them so I can see things again.
I really can't figure out any way to fix these problems, and they're not going away either.

video card hardware failure? I don't know how to test that, but its almost like whatever buffer that provides the display isn't sending screen updates to the screen, if I understand your issue correctly.

What kernel are you running? I used to have complete (unrecoverable) Xorg freezes and could only make them go away by running a kernel >=3.8.

Would be interesting to try if the issue reproduces in a live system. And if it does, to check if using another live distro with more recent kernel fixes the issue...

Try running memtest86, and then try running:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/cudagpumemtest/

That should eliminate bad RAM as the cause, and makes it less likely that GPU RAM failure is to blame.

Also, do you hear any high-pitched noises coming from the computer ?

24 gig ram, so unless the ram is bad ..... that is not a problem
Kbuntu so am i right in guessing you are using the 319 deb nvidia driver ?
or is it still using the default Nouveau driver

or did you try replacing it with the "NVIDIA.run"

you mentioned you kept messing up the system trying to install the .run driver
have you reinstalled the os ?


The Nouveau driver can get in the way
unless you remove or blacklist it and rebuild the boot image



so

what is your nvidia card ?
the ram is 24 gig

@dolphin_oracle: I don't think so, but I don't have means of testing that I'm aware of. I do plan to buy a newer card soon, something with more memory on it, aiming towards 3-4GB instead of this 1GB card.

@joe_2000: 3.11.0-15-generic (kubuntu distro)

@metaschima: It's not the RAM & I really don't have the time to test other distros extensively enough to try to replicate them there, I need my desktop usable without having to reconfigure and reinstall software for every time I try to test it, as well as recreating my typical environment I work with.

@John VV: I attempted to use the run file from nvidia's website, but it failed so horribly, I gave up and removed all the scripts it tried to install. I completely removed the Nouveau driver (which I strongly wish was not installed by default, it felt like trying to remove Symantec off Windows). After having no graphical drivers, I finally installed the 319deb drivers off apt. I made more attempts to upgrade after, because the issue was occuring, however they didn't work out, because I couldn't get X to start, so gave up on trying to update the driver since I can't find any sollutions from others with the same problem (actually, I can't find others with the same updating problem that have any sollution provided).



The hardware is:
Motherboard: Intel dx58so
RAID controller: Intel rs2bl080
Memory: 24GB (6x 4GB)Crucial BLT3KIT4G3D1608DT2TXRG
Video Card: PNY nVidia 470GTX XLR8
Processor: Intel i7 960 @ 3.85GHz, quad core (+HT)
Display: 3840x1080 (2x 1920x1080)

I don't think the rest of the perephials really matter, though I can list them if requested.