Crashing At Login and Firefox

[firemind]

I have an old computer running Linux Mint 20,1 that was upgraded from 19,3 or so. I installed MInt about 3 years ago. Other than an occasional fsck the only issue has been my Corsair not being recognized at boot, After replugging my mouse things would work fine. I managed to get some Windows online games working in Wine and can play intensely for hours with no issues.

About 6 months ago the computer began to occasionally reboot as soon as I logged in but before the desktop loaded. Sometimes it would get to the desktop and the sound would play and the system would crash but this was rare.
Recently the system got unstable after I had a problem updating my nVidia driver. I restored using Timeshift and things were fine for awhile.
The reboots at login have been getting worse and today I was scrolling through news articles at Google and my system rebooted.
Hardware?
My comp is old but Smart Data says its old/pre-fail but okay. I read an article about LVM State and checked that and it said the physical volumes weren't okay.I don't remember how I found that info.
Heat?
The computer does need a cleaning but checking info in the terminal says temp is fine.
Power?
I haven't noticed anything out of the ordinary.
Memory?
I haven't had any problems with memory -but recently I have noticed pulseaudio warnings just before some crashes. It's usually related to systemd not finding bluez. . I don't have a wireless network and bluetooth shouldn't be activated. Once my comp crashed/rebooted while watching videos in an appimage program. Appimages are supposed to be separate from the system but the last entries in the logs mentioned the program and pulseaudio and bluez. If a program is causing memory spikes i am not seeing any slowdown - just a sudden reboot of the system.

I am looking at getting a new computer and will be getting an external drive to backup files. I hope to get this comp cleaned up so it lasts until I can replace it. i would hate to spend money on maintenance just to have the hard drive fail.

Any thoughts on what to check for would be appreciated,

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inxi -Fxxxrz
System:
  Kernel: 5.4.0-117-generic x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc v: 9.4.0 
  Desktop: Cinnamon 4.8.6 wm: muffin 4.8.1 dm: LightDM 1.30.0 
  Distro: Linux Mint 20.1 Ulyssa base: Ubuntu 20.04 focal 
Machine:
  Type: Desktop Mobo: Gigabyte model: B85M-D3H v: x.x serial: <filter> 
  UEFI: American Megatrends v: F9 date: 01/24/2014 
CPU:
  Topology: Quad Core model: Intel Core i5-4430 bits: 64 type: MCP 
  arch: Haswell rev: 3 L2 cache: 6144 KiB 
  flags: avx avx2 lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 ssse3 vmx 
  bogomips: 23947 
  Speed: 798 MHz min/max: 800/3200 MHz Core speeds (MHz): 1: 821 2: 810 
  3: 804 4: 878 
Graphics:
  Device-1: Intel Xeon E3-1200 v3/4th Gen Core Processor Integrated Graphics 
  vendor: Gigabyte driver: i915 v: kernel bus ID: 00:02.0 chip ID: 8086:0412 
  Device-2: NVIDIA GM107 [GeForce GTX 750 Ti] vendor: eVga.com. 
  driver: nvidia v: 470.141.03 bus ID: 01:00.0 chip ID: 10de:1380 
  Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.20.13 driver: modesetting,nvidia 
  unloaded: fbdev,nouveau,vesa resolution: 1440x900~60Hz 
  OpenGL: renderer: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 750 Ti/PCIe/SSE2 
  v: 4.6.0 NVIDIA 470.141.03 direct render: Yes 
Audio:
  Device-1: Intel Xeon E3-1200 v3/4th Gen Core Processor HD Audio 
  driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel bus ID: 00:03.0 chip ID: 8086:0c0c 
  Device-2: Intel 8 Series/C220 Series High Definition Audio 
  vendor: Gigabyte driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel bus ID: 00:1b.0 
  chip ID: 8086:8c20 
  Device-3: NVIDIA GM107 High Definition Audio [GeForce 940MX] 
  vendor: eVga.com. driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel bus ID: 01:00.1 
  chip ID: 10de:0fbc 
  Sound Server: ALSA v: k5.4.0-117-generic 
Network:
  Device-1: Realtek RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet 
  vendor: Gigabyte driver: r8169 v: kernel port: d000 bus ID: 03:00.0 
  chip ID: 10ec:8168 
  IF: enp3s0 state: up speed: 100 Mbps duplex: full mac: <filter> 
  IP v4: <filter> type: dynamic noprefixroute scope: global 
  broadcast: <filter> 
  IP v6: <filter> type: noprefixroute scope: link 
  WAN IP: <filter> 
Drives:
  Local Storage: total: 931.51 GiB used: 272.06 GiB (29.2%) 
  ID-1: /dev/sda vendor: Western Digital model: WD10EZEX-00BN5A0 
  size: 931.51 GiB speed: 6.0 Gb/s rotation: 7200 rpm serial: <filter> 
  rev: 1A01 scheme: GPT 
Partition:
  ID-1: / size: 915.40 GiB used: 272.06 GiB (29.7%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda2 
Sensors:
  System Temperatures: cpu: 35.0 C mobo: N/A gpu: nvidia temp: 32 C 
  Fan Speeds (RPM): N/A gpu: nvidia fan: 40% 
Repos:
  No active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list 
  Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/additional-repositories.list 
  1: deb https://dl.winehq.org/wine-builds/ubuntu/ focal main
  Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/lutris-team-lutris-focal.list 
  1: deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/lutris-team/lutris/ubuntu focal main
  Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/official-package-repositories.list 
  1: deb http://packages.linuxmint.com ulyssa main upstream import backport #id:linuxmint_main
  2: deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal main restricted universe multiverse
  3: deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal-updates main restricted universe multiverse
  4: deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal-backports main restricted universe multiverse
  5: deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ focal-security main restricted universe multiverse
  6: deb http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu/ focal partner
Info:
  Processes: 227 Uptime: 21m Memory: 6.73 GiB used: 1.26 GiB (18.7%) 
  Init: systemd v: 245 runlevel: 5 Compilers: gcc: 9.4.0 alt: 7/9 
  Shell: bash v: 5.0.17 running in: gnome-terminal inxi: 3.0.38 
leon@leon1:~$ 

[firemind]

I forgot to mention something that may be relevant. Twice in the last week or so my system has rebooted instead of shutting down when I clicked on "Shutdown".

[mikaelrask]

Hey and welcome to the forum and linux mint, i suggest go into your bios disable secure boot and fast boot and see if that can help if you have not done that already. secure boot can sometimes interfere when you update drivers like nvidia. same with fast boot, fast boot is a thing in windows that should boot a computer faster, but fast boot prevent a computer to really shutdown 100% and can interfere with external hardware like hhd even external mouse to work correctly.

[firemind]

I checked and don't have secure boot or fast boot enabled. Due to one SNAP game sometimes i don't have a fast boot at all.

I tried replacing my Corsair mouse with my old Microsoft one which Mint always recognizes.The mouse was usable during boot and when the desktop loaded. But the system still sometimes reboots at login or from the desktop.

For Firefox I began turning off add-ons and things are better but the computer still randomly reboots.

The other day there were several security updates so I ran timeshift and the system crashed. The second time I tried the restore point didn't show up.Yet daily backups do.
This morning my screen went black,then normal, and then it rebooted. When i checked logs later I saw this:

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[Firmware Bug]: TSC_DEADLINE disabled due to Errata; please update microcode to version: 0x22 (or later)

my bios is:

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[UEFI: American Megatrends v: F9 date: 01/24/2014

I did some research online and some of my issues may be related to needing a firmware update.
I saw something about "sudo apt update amd-microcode" but can't find the site the info was on.

[SMG]

Power?
I haven't noticed anything out of the ordinary.

You didn't notice your computer spontaneously rebooting when it should not be doing that? I consider that to be something out of the ordinary.

Usually, a spontaneous reboot is related to the hardware. Could be a variety of things from power drops across the rails of the motherboard to a bad connection between the motherboard and the hard drive. Based on a little research I did, it could also mean all your system needs is a BIOS update.

The latest kernel is 5.4.0-131 so it appears your system is missing updates.

System:
Kernel: 5.4.0-117-generic x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc v: 9.4.0
Desktop: Cinnamon 4.8.6 wm: muffin 4.8.1 dm: LightDM 1.30.0
Distro: Linux Mint 20.1 Ulyssa base: Ubuntu 20.04 focal

If this is the correct link GA-B85M-D3H (rev. 1.0/1.1) , the latest version is F15. Version F12 indicates it adds support for "New 4th Generation Intel Core Processors" which is what you have.

Machine:
Type: Desktop Mobo: Gigabyte model: B85M-D3H v: x.x serial: <filter>
UEFI: American Megatrends v: F9 date: 01/24/2014

[firemind]

You didn't notice your computer spontaneously rebooting when it should not be doing that? I consider that to be something out of the ordinary.

I did notice but why would that only happen at boot or while using the Cinnamon desktop and not in MMO games online? Mint would sometimes crash after I exited the game and opened a program on the desktop or tried email or Firefox. But I could game for hours without problems.

While checking the bios setup one day I noticed that one of the CPU/GPU fan speeds and rechecked them for a few days. The CPU fan and two of the GPU fans seemed to be working fine but one GPU fan (#1) always had a speed of 0. It may be burned out or clogged.

I experimented with using the builtin video drivers and the computer crashed less but I couldn't play games - and start up was still an issue,

Two things made the computer seem a lot more stable: I bought a new router that is faster and the bottleneck of the old one was gone. Using Firefox was much smoother and there was less lag. I also switched back to my old Microsoft Intellimouse from my Corsair. The Corsair was smoother - especially in games - but Mint always had some issue with it and it may have had a short in the wire. I don't know how or even if they helped but have had only one crash from desktop since I implemented them about two weeks ago.

I can't think of anything I updated to fix this. No new kernel or drivers other than security updates.

One thing that wasn't fixed was the reboots at startup - either before the login screen or just after. I found though that if I went into recovery mode selected, and selected resume, my computer would reach the desktop and things would be fine.

I will be moving to a new computer next week and it won't have Mint installed - at least for a while. I still appreciate any reply to this post as comments may help me and others in the future. Since the issue is only partially solved i won't flair it as fixed.
Thanks.

[SMG]

One thing that wasn't fixed was the reboots at startup - either before the login screen or just after. I found though that if I went into recovery mode selected, and selected resume, my computer would reach the desktop and things would be fine.

Which recovery mode are you seeing? Is it the screen with the blue background? If so, are the graphics driver loading when you resume? You would need to check inxi -Gx to verify that.

[firemind]

Yes. There is a white box with the clickable text and a blue background.

I click ESC when my Gigabyte splash screen pops up and get the grub menu and select the latest kernel recovery option. Then I get the dialogue box above.. Sometimes the text doesn't display right but selecting clean and resume brings me to the login screen and my desktop loads. Instead of a spalsh screen on shutdown I get the text version of the shutdown.

inxi -Gx:

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Graphics:
  Device-1: Intel Xeon E3-1200 v3/4th Gen Core Processor Integrated Graphics 
  vendor: Gigabyte driver: N/A bus ID: 00:02.0 
  Device-2: NVIDIA GM107 [GeForce GTX 750 Ti] vendor: eVga.com. 
  driver: nvidia v: 470.161.03 bus ID: 01:00.0 
  Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.20.13 driver: nvidia 
  unloaded: fbdev,modesetting,nouveau,vesa resolution: 1440x900~60Hz 
  OpenGL: renderer: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 750 Ti/PCIe/SSE2 
  v: 4.6.0 NVIDIA 470.161.03 direct render: Yes 

There was a security update for nVidia the other day and when I installed it it asked to install a new kernel so this is the latest inxi -Fxxxrz. I still need to use the procedure mentioned above. Also the Nvidia optimus icon on my tray shows Nvidia is active in performance mode.

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 inxi -Fxxxrz
System:
  Kernel: 5.4.0-135-generic x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc v: 9.4.0 
  Desktop: Cinnamon 4.8.6 wm: muffin 4.8.1 dm: LightDM 1.30.0 
  Distro: Linux Mint 20.1 Ulyssa base: Ubuntu 20.04 focal 
Machine:
  Type: Desktop Mobo: Gigabyte model: B85M-D3H v: x.x serial: <filter> 
  UEFI: American Megatrends v: F9 date: 01/24/2014 
CPU:
  Topology: Quad Core model: Intel Core i5-4430 bits: 64 type: MCP 
  arch: Haswell rev: 3 L2 cache: 6144 KiB 
  flags: avx avx2 lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 ssse3 vmx 
  bogomips: 23945 
  Speed: 998 MHz min/max: 800/3200 MHz Core speeds (MHz): 1: 998 2: 998 
  3: 998 4: 998 
Graphics:
  Device-1: Intel Xeon E3-1200 v3/4th Gen Core Processor Integrated Graphics 
  vendor: Gigabyte driver: N/A bus ID: 00:02.0 chip ID: 8086:0412 
  Device-2: NVIDIA GM107 [GeForce GTX 750 Ti] vendor: eVga.com. 
  driver: nvidia v: 470.161.03 bus ID: 01:00.0 chip ID: 10de:1380 
  Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.20.13 driver: nvidia 
  unloaded: fbdev,modesetting,nouveau,vesa resolution: 1440x900~60Hz 
  OpenGL: renderer: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 750 Ti/PCIe/SSE2 
  v: 4.6.0 NVIDIA 470.161.03 direct render: Yes 
Audio:
  Device-1: Intel Xeon E3-1200 v3/4th Gen Core Processor HD Audio 
  driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel bus ID: 00:03.0 chip ID: 8086:0c0c 
  Device-2: Intel 8 Series/C220 Series High Definition Audio 
  vendor: Gigabyte driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel bus ID: 00:1b.0 
  chip ID: 8086:8c20 
  Device-3: NVIDIA GM107 High Definition Audio [GeForce 940MX] 
  vendor: eVga.com. driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel bus ID: 01:00.1 
  chip ID: 10de:0fbc 
  Sound Server: ALSA v: k5.4.0-135-generic 
Network:
  Device-1: Realtek RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet 
  vendor: Gigabyte driver: r8169 v: kernel port: d000 bus ID: 03:00.0 
  chip ID: 10ec:8168 
  IF: enp3s0 state: up speed: 1000 Mbps duplex: full mac: <filter> 
Drives:
  Local Storage: total: 931.51 GiB used: 267.12 GiB (28.7%) 
  ID-1: /dev/sda vendor: Western Digital model: WD10EZEX-00BN5A0 
  size: 931.51 GiB speed: 6.0 Gb/s rotation: 7200 rpm serial: <filter> 
  rev: 1A01 scheme: GPT 
Partition:
  ID-1: / size: 915.32 GiB used: 267.12 GiB (29.2%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda2 
Sensors:
  System Temperatures: cpu: 39.0 C mobo: N/A gpu: nvidia temp: 32 C 
  Fan Speeds (RPM): N/A gpu: nvidia fan: 40% 
Repos:
  No active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list 
  Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/additional-repositories.list 
  1: deb https://dl.winehq.org/wine-builds/ubuntu/ focal main
  Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/lutris-team-lutris-focal.list 
  1: deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/lutris-team/lutris/ubuntu focal main
  Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/official-package-repositories.list 
  1: deb http://packages.linuxmint.com ulyssa main upstream import backport #id:linuxmint_main
  2: deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal main restricted universe multiverse
  3: deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal-updates main restricted universe multiverse
  4: deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal-backports main restricted universe multiverse
  5: deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ focal-security main restricted universe multiverse
  6: deb http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu/ focal partner
Info:
  Processes: 219 Uptime: 4h 58m Memory: 6.73 GiB used: 2.56 GiB (38.0%) 
  Init: systemd v: 245 runlevel: 5 Compilers: gcc: 9.4.0 alt: 7/9 
  Shell: bash v: 5.0.17 running in: gnome-terminal inxi: 3.0.38 

[SMG]

Sometimes the text doesn't display right but selecting clean and resume brings me to the login screen and my desktop loads.

I'm wondering if running fsck might help. You would want to do that with the hard drive unmounted so we usually recommend booting to an install usb because you can still run the OS without having the hard drive mounted. Here are two resources for running fsck Check and Repair Filesystem Errors With fsck Command in Linux and How to Use fsck Command to Check and Repair Filesystem.

The data you posted indicates you are running in Nvidia Performance mode and all the drivers are loading so this would not seem to be an Nvidia driver issue. I think it is more likely a hardware-related issue (BIOS or hard drive).