Computer freezes a lot while compiling, if I have xscreensaver running, etc

scawt · 02-01-2005, 08:47 PM

I had this problem before on a different hard drive, but I was planning on getting a new hard drive with a fresh install anyhow, so I let it slide. But now here I am on a fresh 250GB HDD with Slackware 10.0 installed, and it's still doing it. If I try to compile anything (MPlayer, for example), it will go for a little while and then freeze, forcing reboot. On my old hard drive I was using it had ext2, but now I am using reiserfs. With reiserfs it doesn't really seem to do a hard drive scan, but with ext2 it would find bad block/inode sizes, correct them, and then when it froze the next time there would be more. It also happens if I try to download a large file, or if I am running xscreensaver (I say this because it would freeze everynight, but last night I killed xscreensaver and it didn't crash overnight). This is all I can think of right now, but if you need to know anymore just ask.

Any ideas? This can get quite annoying.

kopikat · 02-01-2005, 09:28 PM

As far as I know, compiling something concerns the CPU, not the HD, so I don't see what is the relation between your different harddrives and your freezing problem.
I have a P2 @ 400mhz so everytime I compile something it kind of slow things down, though it has never froze the computer. I don't know what PC you are running, but even if you where running a 486 compiling should never freeze your PC. But, I repeat, I don't think it has anything to do with your HD. You should try and see if the kernel issues any error messages when the system crashes. You could do this by activating syslogd and configuring syslogd.conf to show any kernel error on one of your virtual consoles.

egag · 02-02-2005, 05:34 AM

well...i think of 2 possible reasons :

-maybe your cpu is overheating ?
( check )
-maybe your memory-chips are not to good
( you could run a test for that )

egag

freeka · 02-02-2005, 06:11 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by egag

-maybe your memory-chips are not to good
( you could run a test for that )

yeah, you should test ya ram with memtest, i think ur problem is ya ram.... if u can, try other ram bolts and check if the problem remain

scawt · 02-02-2005, 09:32 PM

Wow, thank you all very much! It was one of my sticks of RAM (but of course not the one I took out first). It is running great now albeit on 128MB of RAM. I was completely at a loss, so it's a great help. Thanks for taking that time out of your day to help me out.

Scott