Hi,

I use Kubuntu 8.04.1 (Kernel=2.6.24-19) on a Dell Inspiron 1545 Laptop.
Whenever I try to run VLC or Xine, the player loads, and then the entire system stops responding.

Mouse cursor moves on the screen, but clicking on anything is useless.
The only thing I can do is turn the machine off using power key, and then start it again.

I installed both packages (VLC and Xine) using standard "apt-get install" command; without any errors.

Any ideas why a video watching software would paralyze the entire system?


Thanks for reading,
Sety.

Ubuntu 8.04x reached end of life several years ago:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Releases
Instead of trying to struggle with an operating system that has been unsupported for several years your best option would be to do a clean install of the current version 12.04.
Note that Ubuntu 12.04 is a Long Term Support (LTS) version. So 12.04 will be supported for 3-5 years for the desktop version. This will give you several years of security updates as well as newer features.
Trying to troubleshoot a long dead OS is a waste of time.

In vlc,go to preferences--->video --->Select X11 video output save and restart the vlc.
Similar for xine but select master of universe option in settings to display all options.Then select x11 output