I am running Ubuntu on a Dell laptop and an error message has recently come up and I hav no idea how to fix it - am a novice with linux. Don't know if the error message and the shutting down are related - maybe someone can let me know. Doesn't seem to be anything special that does it. Just all of a sudden the screen will go blank and everything freezes up. Have to do a hard boot to recover. Will try to post the error message. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Not allowed to post attachments, but do have a pic of the error. Has to do with unmet dependencies.

please search for threads with "random reboot" or "random hangs" in the title, i've seen something similar very recently.

other than that, if you cannot provide any additional information, there isn't much we can do.

There may be an error message available for you to peruse. Do on a vtty or an xterm:You can scroll through and maybe spot the message that went by too fast to read. You can redirect journalctl output to a file to paste here if you can't make sense of what you see, e.g.:You can limit output volume to just failures thus:Seefor more info.

found it.
there's more for debian and ubuntu.

Yeah, these two issues (??) could be related, but without knowing what this "error" message says, it's hard for me to be able to say anything else about that. You'll have to try and capture it, or write it down and post it. As has been said, there maybe something in your system logs and it sounds like there should be, for this "error" message you're getting.

This sounds very much like a hardware issue of some description to me. Based on this thread and my own problems, it sounds like a hard drive, SSD drive or other drive maybe faulty. That's just a guess at this point in terms of what piece of hardware could be at fault.

You'll need to try and verify your hardware is working correctly, to try and find the piece of hardware that could be causing that to happen. But it does once again sound like a hardware related issue to me. Your system logs, like your kernel log, etc may and likely would give you some idea about what could be at fault.

Given what I said above you should check your drives SMART status, in case there is something there - there may not be, but that doesn't mean your drive(s) are not failing.

Run the following command as the "root user",

Replace the "sdX" with the correct device node name, like "sda", "sdb", etc, whichever one(s) it is.

Are the air vents clear of dust or other blockage. Do you use the computer in a way that might block the cooling vents (for example, setting it on your lap or on a couch)? Overheating is the most common cause of unexpected computer shutdowns.

Here's a link on how to monitor CPU temperatures in Ubuntu: https://askubuntu.com/questions/1583...pu-temperature