Freezing

[dayne2]

Linux Mint 12 randomly freezes. I thought it was related to the video card driver, but after doing some reading and tests i'm not sure what the problem is. The only way to get the computer going again is to hit the reset button. I also get freezes everytime I try to play one of the free linux games from the software manager.

[cwwgateway]

It might be helpful to know what your graphics card is, the drivers you have installed, what laptop you have, and what desktop environment you're using. When it freezes try ctrl+alt+backspace or alt+PrintScreen+k (your print screen key text may vary, the three keyboards that I have here have PrtScn, PrntScr, and PrintScrn on them) if you haven't already. Also, try going into alt+ctrl+f2 to see if you have any error messages there (I had a webcam that caused error messages there). To get back to the gui from the prompt press ctrl+alt+f7.

[dayne2]

ATI Radeon X1650- I didn't install any drivers- When I go to see my video card driver it says Gallium 4.0 on ATI RV530
AMD Athlon 64 bit 3500+
Sound Blaster X-Fi
1 GB Memory

[cwwgateway]

If you go to additional drivers, are there any drivers available? Just as a note, the open source ATI drivers tend to work better with gnome shell than the proprietary ones, so you might have to experiment (be careful, though). While this probably wouldn't cause the behavior your seeing, 1 GB of memory could (possibly) be a little bit on the low side for Gnome 3. Does the same thing happen in Gnome Classic (log out, click the gear icon next to your name, click gnome classic from the dropdown menu, log in)?

[bpauldun]

I'm experiencing the same issue with the freezing.
It seems to be random, but mainly when using Chrome and when encountering flash or streamed media in my case.
I'm running on a T60i stinkpad with the ATI X1400 radeon mobility.
I've not experienced this in any of the other versions either Mint or Ubuntu, so I'm wondering if the Mate is part of the problem.

[cwwgateway]

I'm experiencing the same issue with the freezing.
It seems to be random, but mainly when using Chrome and when encountering flash or streamed media in my case.
I'm running on a T60i stinkpad with the ATI X1400 radeon mobility.
I've not experienced this in any of the other versions either Mint or Ubuntu, so I'm wondering if the Mate is part of the problem.

Are you using MATE, MGSE (gnome shell), or Gnome Fallback?

[dayne2]

How do go to advanced drivers?

[cwwgateway]

How do go to advanced drivers?

Sorry, for some reason I said advanced instead of additional drivers . Search additional drivers in the menu, open it, and try activating the driver (or one of the drivers if there are more than one).

[bpauldun]

Are you using MATE, MGSE (gnome shell), or Gnome Fallback?

I've run into this when using Mate and the latest Linux Mint. I was concerned that it was a mate issue, so i tested it against the Ubuntu 12.04 LTS version. In the 12.04 version I experienced the same using Cinnamon and Gnome 3. In both cases, the crash froze the system, however when using the Cinnamon, Unity was able to recover from the crash and 'send a report'.
I've seem some similar reports with flash and gnome, but would not like to muddy the water with other issues because those issues might not actually be related, yet appear on the surface to be related.

For me the significant result was the crash within Gnome 3, using Chrome and Firefox, where the sites viewed had multiple flash media embedded in in it.

I'm going to sit with Unity and see if I get an repro's of the issue there and then evaluate whats next. For me, this is a real killer because I've been really loving Mint.