keep or delete initrd.img.old and vmlinux.img.old?

[phr33k]

I'm trying to like Linux Mint but am having some problems. I'll put each problem in a separate post.

I installed Linux Mint 12 Gnome using mint4win about a week ago, 16 Feb 2012 more or less. I always do all the Mint updates immediately and somewhere along the way I apparently got an update to the two files initrd and vmlinuz.

Mint has been crashing ever since I installed it. It may run for a day or two and then what happens is that I can move the cursor around with my mouse or touchpad but cannot click on anything anywhere, i.e., clicking doesn't cause anything to happen. I then CTRL+ALT+DEL to log out and log back in, after which Mint works again.

Also, when I used an external USB HDD once, I right-clicked on it and selected "safely remove device" only to have Mint super crash all the way to a black screen with maybe a 4 or 6 point white font and lots of stuff I didn't understand, some of which flew off the top of the screen. Not a safe removal IMHO.

I'm on a Dell Inspiron 6400 (mm061) with 2GB of RAM, a Core Duo 1.66GHz CPU (T2300) and an ATI Mobility Radeon X1300 GPU. I only installed to 7GB on my HDD and currently still have 1.3GB free inside mint4win after installing a few things like Cairo-dock. The HDD is 120GB and has 27GB free. I've also got Puppy Linux 5.2.8 installed via Lin'n'Win in 3GB of space.

Mostly I log into the Gnome desktop but have installed and tried Cinnamon, plus updated it to 1.3.1. I wanted to try compiz-fusion, which runs in Gnome Classic, but I must have done something wrong since I just logged into a dark screen after trying to follow the instructions at http://www.howtoforge.com/enabling-comp ... 2-gnome-12

Since I don't know when I started having problems with crashing, I don't know whether to keep or delete the old initrd and vmlinuz files. Any advice? TIA.

[chipbuster]

I would NOT reccommend deleting those just yet, because those are your old kernel/initramdisk files. Have you tried booting back into the old kernel? On my version of Mint, it gives me the option to use the two most recent versions of the kernel when I boot (although I'm using Debian Edition, so your system may be different)

If it works when you boot into the old kernel, the issue is probably something in the newer kernel. If it's still broken, then the issue is more likely that something else you downloaded isn't playing nice with your system.

[phr33k]

OK, I'll try running the previous version for a couple of days. Sometimes I get through a day without a Mint crash, so I won't be hasty. Last night I used the "Safely remove drive" option for an external USB HDD and it worked fine. Crashes seem as random as can be. Puppy 5.2.8 on the same machine doesn't crash at all, and the original Windows XP installation is orders of magnitude more stable than Linux Mint 12 Gnome.

I installed with mint4win and only specified 7GB for the Linux Mint 12 Gnome disk space. I figured I could just store any data I wanted out in Windowsland. I've still got 1.3GB free in the 7GB Mint installation, but wanted to delete the old initrd and vmlinuz to pick up some more space.

Thanks for your reply.

[chipbuster]

I feel your pain man. Same thing is happening to my Arch Linux right now--random crashing without any apparent cause. Just keep an eye out for any peculiarities or similarities in crashes...that's just about all you can do for now.

[phr33k]

Well, it didn't take too long, just an hour or two, before the old version of Linux Mint 12 Gnome that I originally installed crashed. I couldn't log off by using CTRL-ALT-DEL, so I was forced to power off my laptop.

So instead of deleting initrd and vmlinuz, I'm now thinking of wiping out version 12 and installing Linux Mint 11, or even version 9 which is under long term support till April 2013. At least there's documentation for version 11.

I'm tired of the crashes. Too bad, 'cause 12 Gnome sure looks nice. I've never had any version of any Linux distro crash like this on either of my machines. At least I learned some stuff along the way. It's a good thing that DVDs are cheap.