Mint Maya freezing every time I launch an App

[noctcrawler]

First off... I'm fairly new to Linux, thus my posting of this msg in the newb section.

When I first installed Linux Mint Maya KDE, everything worked perfectly! My dual monitors were detected and used, and the OS didn't freeze any; but now after I "activated" the current recomended NVIDIA driver from within "Additional Drivers", the OS became very unstable! I had to switch to the "Failsafe" desktop so I could do the updates (I didn't install any "safe" but untested updates. I only installed level 1 & 2 updates in the update manager). Now, it (the OS) is more stable, but it still freezes everytime I launch an App; and both CPUs spike through the roof. My CPU is a 2.66GHz Core 2 Duo, I have 3.4GB of RAM, and my video card is a GeForce 8800 GTS w/ 640MB of memory. Besides just using the failsafe desktop, what can I do to troubleshoot this problem?

[viking777]

First off... I'm fairly new to Linux, thus my posting of this msg in the newb section.

Fair enough, but the topic is about KDE so I have moved it to their section.

Welcome to the forum btw

[Jaws]

I'm not familiar with dual monitor setups but some of the things I would do to troubleshoot the issue, from easiest...

Reboot - if you haven't already done so.
Turn off desktop effects - Alt+Shift+F12 - and keep off at startup in System Settings.
Remove, turn off, Compiz if you're using it.
Use top in a terminal to see what program is pinning your CPUs.
Launch an app through a terminal and see if you get errors messages.
Open the NVIDIA X Server Settings panel to see if everything is kosher. Note the driver you're running.
Check the Xorg.0.log for (WW) or (EE) entries. Go to -> root -> var -> log or use KSystemLog in the main menu. Check System Log here too.
Try using just a single monitor.
Change the nVidia driver. There seems to be some issues with the 295.40 driver.