Hello

I have posted this on OpenSuse forums with no solution so far, posting here in case it may be KDE related.

These are the specs of my PC:

Dell Precision 340
P4 2.8 Mhz
RAM 2 GB
GPU: HIS ATI Radeon HD4670 IceQ 1 GB

OS: Linux 3.7.10-1.28-default

KDE 4.10.5 "release 1"


The full desktop freezes completely and randomly, it can happen right after the desktop displays, after hours of working, just random.. the duration of the PC been completely locked can be from a few seconds to up to 2 minutes, it can happen once a day and it can keep happening repeatedly.

I have all desktop effects turned off, all desktop search index and automatic updates turned off.

Since the system freezes completely, using 'top' or any system monitor tool is useless.

RAM and hard disk has been check, it's not 'bad' hardware because I have an XP partition and I play games like DC Universe Online at 1600x1200 with no lag at all.

Some people suggests it's the GPU driver.

Drivers were installed while doing a complete and clean install. The drivers I have are, for Open GL:

X.Org
Gallium 0.4 on AMD RV730
3.0 Mesa 9.0.2
radeon

X Server:

11.0

Any suggestion will be welcomed.

Thank you

This sounds more related to your operating system than KDE software. Do you experience the same thing in other desktop environments? Can you access the TTYs (e.g. Ctrl+Alt+F1; usually Ctrl+Alt+F7 will change it back)? If you run an SSH server, you could try to SSH to your computer when it freezes and see if you can access it.

do you mean accessing the TTY while it's frozen ? no, I can't, it's frozen and won't register any keyboard or mouse events while the pc is in that state.

I suspect it's most likely something in the OS, like the drivers, but posted here, well.. just in case some new idea comes up.

I don't use any other desktop so I don't know if it'll happen using another desktop.

To verify it is a graphics driver issue, does the caps lock light respond when the key is pressed?
If it doesn't, this is definitely a freeze which is locking up the whole X server - so likely isn't being caused by KDE.

Could you try installing the proprietary ATI fglrx driver to see if it solves the issue?

bcooksley wrote:To verify it is a graphics driver issue, does the caps lock light respond when the key is pressed?
If it doesn't, this is definitely a freeze which is locking up the whole X server - so likely isn't being caused by KDE.

Could you try installing the proprietary ATI fglrx driver to see if it solves the issue?

I just tried, when it freezes, both the caps lock and num lock does not work, (light doesn't respond), mouse doesn't move either, it's a full 'freeze'.

I haven't try installing the proprietary driver because I can't have a non-working pc if anything happens, as annoying as these 'freezes' are, at least I can still work.

I see. As this is a full X freeze and you have disabled compositing there is likely very little we can suggest to fix this as it is a driver issue.
You could try checking the content of "dmesg" and "/var/log/Xorg.0.log" however as they could possibly contain some indications as to why the system is freezing.

It would also be worthwhile to verify that the system isn't under memory pressure - as a swapping computer will give a similar experience.

I'll check the logs, it must be the driver. Too bad. The system is not under memory pressure since the 'freezze' can happen right after I log-in with no open application. I currently have 2GB of swap memory and never seem too much use of it even while working on Krita on 'print resolution' images with more than 15 layers. It's very random, I know it's not the hardware or lack of resources for the work I do, guess it is after all, the driver.

Thank you for the help.