Ubuntu 11.04: Black screen full of codes?
 

well i'll describe what went on, so, at first it was a good boot up, 24 degrees temperatures running photoshop not half bad, i go on Firefox and again all seems fine, shoots up to 30 degrees as i play some music. as it normally does, i go on youtube to look at some trailers, it doesn't load. so i close it and go on a couple of sites, the sites stop loading, and the internet disconnects on me, which is the norm, really and i do what i usually do, take out the dongle and put it in again. but instead of working this time, it gives me a black screen full of codes and the music i play runs in a loop of about 2 seconds of the track, i had to do a forced shutdown, which didn't feel good.
i couldn't get any of the codes down. but does anyone know what this is? and what caused it?
everything upon the incident inside the PC sounded normal. nothing was whining and no fans were running high RPM.
thanks if you can help me out here. this is the first time i've seen this, and if i have to fork out for hardware the 7th time the thing is getting scrapped!
P.s Running ubuntu 11.04 on the classic interface.

Start by opening a terminal and running as root "tail -n 100 /var/log/messages" (without quotes) to see if anything significant shows up in re error messages.

Then, try opening the case and carefully (as in keep hands out of the interior to avoid electric shock) check all cooling fans (especially graphics card) to verify they are working properly.

thanks i'll try that in a mo, i have to leave it to cool as it gets a hissy fit if i don't.

okay i started it up clean again and i tried the terms and it says invalid number of lines, what does that mean? no hardware failure?

It probably means you typed in the command wrong :) using 'o' instead of '0' for example. Copy and paste it into your terminal window, and then copy and paste the output here, in CODE tags.

okay i copied and pasted it, and it just gives me another line with "Alex MA-770-UD3" grrr, sometimes i wonder if computers don't like me

Is that your host name or something? I still say you should paste the output here. Hard to see what's wrong with the command otherwise.

yeah that's the host name. the output you speak of, doesn't want to come out. i'll try and find a way of screenshotting it, my print screen button forces the PC to freeze up

Doesn't sound good ... can you run from a Live CD/Live USB?

http://i1227.photobucket.com/albums/...reenshot-4.png
that's what i get.

Oh right. Everything before the $ is your prompt (user@host:dir with ~ being your home directory). In other words there is no output at all from the command.

Try
- you'll be prompted for your password.

If that still produces no output, what is the output of
You can copy the text from the terminal window, using right-click > copy, or Ctrl-Shift-C, and then paste it into a post. Saves the hassle of screenshots.

thanks i tested it out on the laptop with 11.10 on it that recently had a "crash" itself and i got the messages i needed, i'll post the main PC's one up when i'm on it.