Linux Mint 13 Mate 64 on a HP laptop. 8 GB RAM.

Boots fine, runs for hours fine, and then out of nowhere my wallpaper disappears to black background. Additionally, all desktop icons turn to blank white generic style icons and do not work. The text in the error dialogues such clicking produces is unreadable.

Some open apps, i.e. firefox can still be accessed from the tray and work OK.

I've looked all over, and the only references I see are related to installs and boot up black screens, which this isn't.

Any clues appreciated...

Have you inspected the logs in /var/log, especially the kdm or gdm and Xorg logs?

1 members found this post helpful.

Yes, nothing jumps out at me, nothing that says ERROR, FAIL or the likes... What would I be looking for?

Thanks for the reply...

Do you have an external monitor you could hook and use for a while side-by-side with the laptop display?

It might be the screen itself.

I cant imagine a monitor causing a wallpaper and icons to disintegrate, while leaving a browser window alone.

1 members found this post helpful.

My laptop was doing something similar before. Took it apart and gave it a good cleaning. That was a few months ago and it's been fine since. But mine would completely freeze. I couldn't launch or close anything. My laptop runs a bit warm anyway so the least little bit of dust in the fan seemed to cause the problem.

1 members found this post helpful.

Thanks to all, I'm suspecting some kind of temperature issue as has been suggested, and will be cleaning and watching even more closely. Appreciate the time folks...