Blocks or no display after machine runs for a few hours

[tossman101]

Ok, so I've been struggling with this for a while now. After my machine has been running for a few hours and I go to wake up the monitor I get a display full of blocks that are one color or another. I can see my desktop behind these blocks but cannot interact with it at all. Like I said this happens after the machine has been running for a few hours but there doesn't seem to be any real pattern to how long, some times an hour or two, some times a day or two. Also sometimes instead of the blocks the monitor just doesn't not wake up at all. When ever this happens either with the blocks or the blank screen I can't get any response with the machine, the lock buttons do nothing, ctrl-alt-del does nothing, I end up having to hit the power button on my tower to reboot the machine. At first I thought it was a video card driver issue, but as far as I can tell the Nvidia driver is loaded and working fine. A friend had suggested that it may be the the ASPM setting for the PCIe slot the card was in, but ASPM is disabled on my machine. I have both sleep and hibernate turned off as well. Below is the output of 'inxi -FGxz'. I hope I have included enough info to go from, if not let me know what you need. I appreciate any help anyone can offer, like I said I've been trying to figure this out for a while and I'm kind at the end of my rope here.


System: Host: Thor Kernel: 3.5.0-17-generic x86_64 (64 bit, gcc: 4.7.2) Desktop: Gnome Distro: Linux Mint 14 Nadia
Machine: Mobo: MICRO-STAR model: 790GX-G65 (MS-7576) version: 1.0 Bios: American Megatrends version: V4.4 date: 02/21/2011
CPU: Single core AMD Phenom II X6 1090T (-UP-) cache: 512 KB flags: (lm nx sse sse2 sse3 sse4a svm) bmips: 6428.85 clocked at 800.00 MHz
Graphics: Card: NVIDIA GF114 [GeForce GTX 560 Ti] bus-ID: 01:00.0 X.Org: 1.13.0 driver: nvidia Resolution: 1280x1024@75.0hz
GLX Renderer: GeForce GTX 560 Ti/PCIe/SSE2 GLX Version: 4.2.0 NVIDIA 304.43 Direct Rendering: Yes
Audio: Card-1: NVIDIA GF114 HDMI Audio Controller driver: snd_hda_intel bus-ID: 01:00.1 Sound: ALSA ver: 1.0.25
Card-2: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI SBx00 Azalia (Intel HDA) driver: snd_hda_intel bus-ID: 00:14.2
Network: Card: Realtek RTL8111/8168B PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet controller
driver: r8169 ver: 2.3LK-NAPI port: b800 bus-ID: 02:00.0
IF: eth0 state: up speed: 10 Mbps duplex: half mac: <filter>
Drives: HDD Total Size: 500.1GB (1.1% used) 1: id: /dev/sda model: WDC_WD5003ABYX size: 500.1GB
Partition: ID: / size: 443G used: 5.3G (2%) fs: ext4 ID: swap-1 size: 17.18GB used: 0.00GB (0%) fs: swap
RAID: No RAID devices detected - /proc/mdstat and md_mod kernel raid module present
Sensors: System Temperatures: cpu: 29.5C mobo: N/A gpu: 0.0:38C
Fan Speeds (in rpm): cpu: N/A
Info: Processes: 134 Uptime: 1:37 Memory: 604.1/16050.9MB Runlevel: 2 Gcc sys: 4.7.2 Client: Shell inxi: 1.8.4

[catweazel]

What you describe is corruption. If it happens when the machine is warm then it's possibly failing hardware.

[tossman101]

Anyway to be certain of that?

[catweazel]

Possibly running metest86 or one of the many prime number generators might get the machine warm enough to trigger it. However corruption is strange thing and its visible effects may actually have no relationship to the root cause. The only way you'll find out for sure what it is is to develop a methodical plan to eliminate causes as you work through troubleshooting.

[tossman101]

I appreciate the help, thank you.