Hi all.

Hopefully this is the right forum to post my question, I'm new to this website. I have done some searches to see if I could find anyone with similar problems, but no luck so far. So here's what is going on.

I recently installed Slackware 10.1 from the ISOs. This isn't the first time that I've installed Linux; I first installed Slackware in 1997, and dabbled in Red Hat in 1999. But for the last few years, I've been running Windows XP exclusively (can't beat the gaming support). At any rate, I decided to try Linux again. After I installed Slackware, I did a 'startx' to see what's new with X. After clicking around for a bit, it locked up completely; I couldn't move the mouse, turn caps lock on, or shut down my computer with the power switch. I did a cold reboot and tried again. This time I stayed in the console, thinking that perhaps there was a problem with my X configuration. But then the same thing happened in the console, a total lockup.

Every time I boot my Linux partition, it runs fine for about 5-10 minutes before going into a total lockup. This is very frustrating for me, as you can probably imagine. I don't know if this is a hardware problem or if switching to a different distro would help. My hardware setup is like so:

Shuttle AK31S2E9 mobo (via kt266) w/ Athlon 1.4 T-Bird
512 megs PC2100 DDR ram
NVIDIA GeForce 4 Ti 4200
Creative SB Audigy 2 ZS
Seagate ST316002 3A 160 gig HD
Western Digital Caviar AC313600D 13.6 gig HD
Western Digital Caviar WD200BB-00CXA0 20 gig HD
Sony CRX185E1 CD-RW
D-Link DFE-530TX PCI Ethernet adapter
Silicon Image SiI 0680 PCI-to-ATA Controller

Please, if anybody has any ideas, I'm willing to try just about anything!

And, for clarification, I am running the vanilla Slackware 10.1 with the standard kernel it came with.

Hi medved80 and welcome back :-)

This one is a toughy, but if your willing to troubleshoot a little I would try something like this.

Grab yourself a live cd of linux and give it a whirl on your computer to see if your hardware freezes again. The live cd should not crash or freeze your machine as it runs from cd and ram. If it does.....I would look at your hardware.

Next try a self installing distro like Vector SOHO 5.1 which is Slackware based. Very easy setup with lovely features. Checkout the config files and copy the ones that you may need like xorg etc. If your machine does not crash with Vector, there must be something in your settings that is causing this to occur.

5 - 10 min sounds like an email check. just a guess.

Another solution is to post your /var/log/messages file so the experts can take a squizzy.

Hope this helps

dude your graphics card is highly suspect for causing a crash of your system. if you google around you will see that ATI and Nvidia graphics-cards crash computers. It is the Linux drivers for the cards. Get the latest driver for your card from the nvidia website and make sure to compile the modules correctly[reading instructions carefully] or else you could have more hard to track probs.

True perhaps, although I've never had a problem with nvidia, but this wouldn't explain the problems at the console would it? The nvidia module is loaded only when booting into X, or am I wrong?

I like the live CD idea, Knoppix perhaps to see what it does with your hardware.

Cheers

tmantist, he has lookup in console too...

medved80, it is a serious problem here, could you try
to tail -f /var/log/syslog or run top command until
the lookup ? This way maybe you will get a hint about
what happen...

commands :
tail -f /var/log/syslog : print the syslog file continuously
top : show the process that eat the more computer
resource at the top

hey dcdbutler, I suggest you uninstall your graphics card. Because Knoppix will detect it and try to auto configure it. Knoppix is pretty good at autoconfiguring hardware. If it fails, uninstall your fancy graphics card TEMPORARILY, and let Knoppix configure the one that is built into your motherboard, the integrated one that I use. Vga standard compatible chipsets are usually in all the highend and low end mobos.


You do have two graphics cards you know. My prediction is that Knoppix will try to use the 'vesa' module or a module for a chip-set that specifically matches your embeded graphics display adapter. My guesss is that it's a SiS chipset or so, man those things are common. Monopoly on integrated graphics chip-sets in mobos?

didn't Silicon Integrated Systems spawn off from Intel?

Happy testing!

huh, thanks for the tips. Like I said, I've never had any problems with nvidia cards (other than those of my own creation). I very rarely boot Knoppix, but when I do, it doens't hang up on the one's I've used, so there's no need to uninstall them I suppose?

Cheers

so I guess your problems are solved then. Peace out man. I'm out!