Hello,
I have an issue on my recent Linux Mint 14 KDE mint4win installation (had it ever since the installation was fresh): sometimes when I turn my computer off or reboot it (both normally, of course, via the KDE menu) it will not turn off or reboot, but instead freeze with the black screen and the KDE mouse cursor on top of it (which can't be moved). In some cases, however, the PC will turn off/reboot normally. When the PC freezes, sometimes doing Ctrl+Alt+Backspace helps to kill the X server and then try the shutdown/reboot procedure again (in that case the second attempt is usually successful). Sometimes, Ctrl+Alt+Backspace doesn't work (and neither does something like Ctrl+Alt+F1/F2/etc. to switch to another virtual terminal). If that is the case, only the SysRq magic keys help to reboot the PC after which I'm able to try the shutdown procedure again once the system boots up. Can you please help me fix this issue? I'm rather new to Linux so I don't know what information would be helpful in this particular case - please let me know what logs and what other data may be helpful in discerning the issue and fixing it. Thank you very much in advance.
Best regards,
Agetian

You should check the logs at '/var/log/syslog' and messages. It may be useful if you post the output of '/sbin/lspci -k'.

Ok, here are the logs, I'm posting the post-boot result of 'dmesg' (it looks like those messages are only related to the boot process), the output of 'lspci -k', as well as the portion of the log from /var/log/syslog from yesterday when the issue happened. I'm not sure what exactly I'm looking for there, so I'm posting the whole thing starting with the latest events around 20:41, but I recall that some major trouble shutting down the PC happened after 23:00, so the relevant lines are likely to be around the 23:15 - 23:45 mark (had to reboot a couple times, once via a SysRq, and once potentially via a hard reboot because even Alt+SysRq+U did not work). Please let me know if anything else is needed.
Thanks in advance.
Best regards,
Agetian

Attached Files

	dmesg_17_apr_2013.txt (70.6 KB, 16 views)
	lspci_-k_17_apr_2013.txt (4.8 KB, 17 views)
	syslog_16_apr.txt (228.4 KB, 13 views)

Now that you mention that Alt SysRq doesn't always work, I'm thinking it may be a hardware issue. It could be related to the nvidia card or drivers.

I don't anything too special in the logs.

Ok, thanks for the info, I'll mess around with the drivers then!

- Agetian