For some reason my Linux will just freeze up randomly. I am using Madrake Linux 9.1. All of the sudden the mouse will just lock up and the system will freeze... only way to get things working is to press reset button. Any idea why this is happening?

What is your hardware?

Hard to tell. It could help with more info. What are the specs of your machine, video card, ram, CPU? Do the freezups happen during heavy load or completely randomly? If under heavy load: Is DMA enabled on your disk's (as root check with hdparm -v /dev/hda for the primary disc hdb for second etc).. What window manager and what version of it are you running?

When the system freezes try getting to console by pressing ctrl-alt-F2 (or F3,F4 etc, F1 gives the console X is running from, ctrl-alt-F7 should bring you back to X). When in console run top to see if any process is grabbing lots of memory/CPU, if such a process exists close top by pressing q then issue killall process-name. A very likely option is that it is X or the window manger bugging out on you, you can kill X simply by going to the console it runs from with ctrl-alt-F1 and press ctrl-c to kill the process (you restart x with startx). Try checking if you have the correct drivers loaded for your video card. Ask for more help here.

sounds like a kernel panic, just for the heck of it post your output of dmesg

I have a p4 1.4 gig processor, 512mb ram, ATI All In Wonder 8500 DV, sound blaster Audigy Sound Card. Problem appears to be occuring at random times, regardless of how many processes are running. I will try those suggustions you have posted next time it freezes up though.

Just a random thought: It might help to disable power management since it is known to mess up some boards. Test disabling apm or apic daemons (you are probably running the apm-daemon). There should be an option somewhere in the control center.. the other option is to disable it while building a new kernel, but that might be a bit overkill

Oh, and the stuff about switching to console will probably not do you any good unless it is X or something above freezing.

//Edit: Have you installed the drivers for your ATI-card? That might be the problem otherwise. Search this board for howtos//

i have experienced the same problem as psxtradr also with mandrake 9.1. how do i disabl ehte apic permanently and where would i do this

I've got something like that once with a Intel mother board. Could it maybe be network related?. Mine was because of a crappy Intel Inbuilt network card. As you also using a P4 and the chances for our hardware be more or less the same, I would guess it's our network card.
Disable it from the bios and see what happens.

Hmm I am using an Intel network card intengrated into my intel motherboard, I will try disabling it and see what happens. Strange think is seems like the keyboard/mouse lockup but the computer does not completly freeze, becase the other day I was using xawtv to watch tv in linux with my tv tuner card, and the computer appeared to freeze (mouse/keyboard not responding), but the TV was still playing. Any ideas?