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sudden hanging , black screen with "-"

Recently, I have encountered a strange problem. Yesterday, I was trying to get libreoffice (after alienBOB and SlackBuild, still errors in compiling, another issue) through the internet. On two occasions I had caught my computer with a black screen and a "-" on the top left hand corner. The LEDs for HDD and WLAN were still flashing but there was no way to get it out of that black screen and I had to hard reset.

As I am typing this, I am suspecting my graphic card to be the problem. It never seems to happen when I am using the computer, always occurs whenever I go away. Obviously that is where the 3D screensaver shows up. But the graphic screensaver does work when it isn't hanging.

Could the graphics card be the problem? Anyone experienced this before?

Quote:

Originally Posted by mongoosecage (Post 4575492)

Anyone experienced this before?

yes.

two questions - are you on slackware 13.37? are you using the i915 (intel) driver for X.org?

Quote:

xdriinfo

if yes - the solution that worked for me was to downgrade to an earlier version of the intel driver for X.org - look for "xf86-video-intel-2.14.0-i486-1.txz" in the pasture directory on the Slackware DVD.

also - i was still able to ssh into my machine, despite the black screen with "-". and take a look at what happened, and shut it down properly.

and - no need to do a hard reset; you may lose data / corrupt your file system(s). better to press the power button and the machine will just shutdown normally.

and - as recommended in http://slackware.osuosl.org/slackwar..._AND_HINTS.TXT, I disabled the "Composite" extension:

Code:

Section "Extensions"

  Option "Composite" "Disable"

EndSection