System Crash

[anthony2010]

Hi all.

Whenever I watch a video online or if I play a game that Ive downloaded 9/10 times the system crashes and I have to re boot several times before it will work without crashing.

I have an amd athlon dual core 4200+ and 1g of ram. How do i determine whether the problem is a need for more memory of if the problem is my o/s or other software?

Ram is expensive so I wouldn't want to buy any if its not actually the problem.

Thanks in advance all.

Ant.

[MagnusB]

You (usually) never experience a system wide crash because of lack of RAM (and it isn't expensive, at least not here), I would rather guess that it is your graphic driver or maybe compiz. Could you provide a bit more information about what graphic card etc you are using?

[anthony2010]

Hiya.

I dont know how to find out exactly which graphics card it is because its built into the motherboard. I do know its an nvidia one. Probably not more than 2 years old. The motherboard came bundled with an amd 4200+dual core processor and a gig of ram.

I finally managed to find out that the 3d windows thing makes a difference and unchecked the box for that. Things seem ok now. I reckon I can live without the fancy cubes and all. it would be nice to have them though but as this comp is mainly for psychology research Its not really that important.

Should we regard this one as solved?

Ant.

[MagnusB]

I would give it some time. And you can find out what your gfx card is by using:

Code: Select all

lspci | grep VGA

in a terminal window. If disabling compiz solved your problem, I would guess that it was related to the nvidia driver.

[anthony2010]

ok, its not solved! I disabled 3D windows ( assuming thats the compiz thing) Is there such a thing anywhere that is actually a straight forward way of switching off compiz?

The output for lspci is as follows:

lspci
00:00.0 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation MCP61 Memory Controller (rev a1)
00:01.0 ISA bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP61 LPC Bridge (rev a2)
00:01.1 SMBus: nVidia Corporation MCP61 SMBus (rev a2)
00:01.2 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation MCP61 Memory Controller (rev a2)
00:02.0 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation MCP61 USB Controller (rev a3)
00:02.1 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation MCP61 USB Controller (rev a3)
00:04.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP61 PCI bridge (rev a1)
00:06.0 IDE interface: nVidia Corporation MCP61 IDE (rev a2)
00:07.0 Bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP61 Ethernet (rev a2)
00:08.0 IDE interface: nVidia Corporation MCP61 SATA Controller (rev a2)
00:09.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP61 PCI Express bridge (rev a2)
00:0b.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP61 PCI Express bridge (rev a2)
00:0c.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP61 PCI Express bridge (rev a2)
00:0d.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation GeForce 6100 nForce 405 (rev a2)
00:18.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] HyperTransport Technology Configuration
00:18.1 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Address Map
00:18.2 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] DRAM Controller
00:18.3 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Miscellaneous Control
01:06.0 Multimedia audio controller: C-Media Electronics Inc CM8338A (rev 10)

Its all martian to me However if someone with more knowledge can determine why this machine keeps crashing, Id love to know! Also, Ive noticed that it crashes when I just play music too. Something to do with multimedia isnt right..

Thanks for looking all.


ant.

[MagnusB]

Which driver are you using? Remove all nvidia packages with System - Administration - Hardware drivers if you installed it that way and then use Envy to automatically install your driver.

[anthony2010]

Hi.

Sorry for the delay in replying! ok. I did the driver thing with envy. It still ctashes. Also i dont have any of those tabs in my os! Control center / visual effects etc do not exist. Perhaps because Im running mint 5 xfce?

Is it at all possible that I need more memory? I have 1gb.

Thankful for your help thus far.

ant.

[anthony2010]

Hi.

Ive never got to the bottom of this. Ive tried everything. I upgraded to 4g of Ram, bought and installed a robust graphics card so that the nvidia drivers were not needed and I installed mint 6 from new. It STILL crashes on startup and still crashes as soon as i try to watch a movie or internet clip. Also if I listen to music, its ok provided I dont try to check my mails or attempt to do anything else with the computer at the same time.

I did have a break from mint as I just wanted a computer that would switch on without the performance of file checking every time and also learned a little how other Linux distros work. However, despite the interesting learning curve, Mint remains by far the best distro for me.

Can anyone out there help with this system crashing on startup ( Right after log in ) and also crashing when using multimedia?

Please?

Ant.

[rivenought]

For consideration: Have you tried the x64 version yet? I find that the 64-bit version and my hardware work better together than the 32-bit version did. Just me thinking out loud...

[anthony2010]

That may actually be a good idea! The truth is, I dont know which version Im running or how to find out! If Im already running the x64 how would I know? is there a tab or an icon or a command line? I cant see anything on my screen or menu that will tell me.

Happy to reload if I'm on the 32 bit system.

Ant.

[anthony2010]

Hi there!

Took me a while but I've finally installed the x64 version. I like it but guess what? The first tune I played made the system crash again.

I'm really at a loss here. Is there anything I can do? One thing I have done is eliminated the problem of crashing on start up by electing automatic log in.

Any and all suggestions to what can be done about this mulimedia crashing thing would be most welcome!

Thanks all.

ant.

[NoClue!]

Did the other linux distro boot and install properly? If so, which one was it?

[anthony2010]

Hi Noclue.

The distro that would always boot was OPENsuse 11. The reason I dont use it is because frankly, its forums are poor and it comes with absolutely no codecs or anything really. Looks nice enough but a nightmare to set up and have working. I tried a few. The problems Im getting with Mint are exactly the same ones I get with Ubuntu 8.10. Namely, boot up problems and crashing whenever I use any multimedia.

None the less, Mint is still way ahead of anything else out there as far as I'm concerned. So having to try 2 or 3 times to get it to boot ( Which since the updates has become the case again) and not being able to run my Samsung yp-q1 and my Nokia 6680 or play any music or videos lest it crashes are things I believe can all be ironed out.

Personally I'm sticking with it because I'm sure, based on my experience of others, its the best one. Anyway, part of the attraction of Linux is finding ways to do things!

Hope that helps.

ant.

[Katzedecimal]

If you go MintMenu > Administration > System Logs and check the logs, what error messages do they say?

[NoClue!]

Sorry I lost track of this one. The reason I ask about the other distro is an effort to figure out if it is a hardware problem. Did you install suse before ubuntu or either mint edition?