I recently installed 17.1 Rebecca on my desktop computer which dual boots with Windows XP. Previously I ran Ubuntu 12 on this unit and it worked fine. When using Firefox searching the Internet, Firefox suddenly shuts down and has to be started again. If just searching through Mint itself looking at programs etc it suddenly switches to a sign on screen indicating the user will log on in so many seconds where you have to load or start whatever you were doing over. I have Mint 17.1 running on a lesser desktop with a Sempron processor and smaller video card and it works fine. Ubuntu 14 runs fine on an old Dell laptop I got for free. Any ideas what could be the issue(s)? The basic details of my set up are AMD Athlon 64x2 dual core processor 4200+, 2.2 GHz 2GB RAM, Display is ATI Radeon HD 3800 Series. I downloaded and installed the 64 bit version of Mint however when I look at the system it indicates 32 bit is installed. Thanks for any suggestions.

I'd start by looking in the log files, particularly /var/log/syslog, /var/log/mintsystem.log, and /var/log/Xorg.0.log.

Tried entering the three log files and get the following responses: if I use just as stated get Permission denied; if put less in front the command get Command not found. Used sudo in front and got the same responses. While I was trying to enter these commands the system crashed to a black screen with a list of entries the first line,
Bug: unable to handle kernel paging request at fffffffc
and the last two lines:
Kernel panic-not syncing: fatal exception in interrupt
drm_kms_helperanic occurred, switching back to text console.

Had to restart to reboot the system. Unable to provide a sreen shot sine the system froze. Does this point to anything?

Did a little searching on the Net and couldn't find anything specific to this bug and if there was a fix. I thought perhaps a more current kernel could be the solution. I am running 3.13.0-37. What would be a suitable kernel for Mint 17.1 Rebecca? I think the most recent kernel may not be necessarily the most suitable. Thoughts?

You could use a more recent version of LM like 18. The kernel panic message indicates it is a kernel configuration issue. Have you recompiled the kernel?

In this situation I'd backup data at least, overwrite the drive boot sector with the "dd" command

dd if=/dev/urandom, of=/dev/sdx [option is yours how much to overwrite - see man pages] in case you have been hacked.

Then upgrade the distro with a fresh installation of a later version like 18. If problems recompile the kernel.

I ssh'ed into my Mint 17 box as user and was able to cat and less /var/log/mintsystem.log with no issue. Something strange is indeed going on, but I'm scratching my head trying to figure out a next place to look.

Try running Mint 17 from a Live CD and seeing whether the problems happen when you are in Live mode. That might provide a hint as to whether the problem is inherent in Mint or local to your install.

I tried Mint 18 and tried the live disc. Works well so far although Firefox froze on me; the mouse moves but no other actions. I downloaded the 64 bit versions since I have AMD 64 however I did notice that Mint 17.1 was installed as 32 bit even though it also was a 64 bit download. How can I change so it will install the 64 bit version? I also checked for drives and Mint 18 came up with amd64-microcode so I selected that in the live trial. In Mint 17.1 that option never came up.