Unrelieved black popups and message boxes

[fred smith]

On Wed, Feb 20, 2013 at 09:39:58AM -0500, Temlakos wrote:
> Everyone:
> 
> I asked this before under a different heading, and no one answered.
> 
> I get a large volume of e-mail, and very often I interact with a site 
> that brings up a lot of message boxes, "suggestion boxes" (for 
> auto-filling from a few keystroke clues), and bringing up apps after 
> they were minimized to the system tray or the task bar. Now why is it 
> that, after maybe two hours of operation, those popups come up and are 
> totally black? The only way to solve the problem, that I have found, is 
> to shut down. And even then, I can't even see what I'm doing, but have 
> to guess where the icons are for executing a controlled shutdown. (I can 
> always bring up a command-line login screen, log in as root, and then 
> shut down. But that doesn't seem to solve the problem for the next session.)
> 
> And when I log back on, everything's fine--until it starts happening 
> again, after several more window draws.
> 
> What could be causing this? Where do I even look for error logs and the 
> like?

I have no clue as to the cause, but doing a shutdown may be
unnecessarily heavy-handed.

Sounds like some kind of X or Gnome or related toolkit problem. 
You could try CTRL-ALT-BKSP, which should kill X, effectively
logging you off, then log in again and see if things are again
working.

if that works there are probably other things to try killing to
see which one is causing the problem. One other idea would be to switch
to a text console, to "ps -u <your username>" to find out all the processes
you own then kill 'em all -- except for the text terminal you're using.

I haven't googled for "gnome troubleshooting", but you might find
something helpful if you did.

good luck!

Fred

-- 
---- Fred Smith -- fredex at fcshome.stoneham.ma.us -----------------------------
  "And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father,
  Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government there will be no end. He 
 will reign on David's throne and over his kingdom, establishing and upholding
      it with justice and righteousness from that time on and forever."
------------------------------- Isaiah 9:7 (niv) ------------------------------