Blue screen of death

[Rick Stevens]

On 08/05/2010 01:56 PM, Kanwar Ranbir Sandhu wrote:
> On Tue, 2010-07-27 at 10:44 -0400, Alex wrote:
>> As if to say, "F"-you, the screen changed from my normal desktop, with
>> Firefox, Azureus, a few terminals, and a few VMs running, to a solid
>> blue screen with just the Fedora squiggly 'F' in the middle of the
>> screen, and the whole computer locked up.
>>
>> Completely dead. Catatonic. Unresponsive. Nothing in the logs.
>>
>> What the hell happened?
>>
>> This is really aggravating, because it has been one problem after
>> another, and I'm beginning to rethink my decision on this desktop.
>
> Lately I've been having random desktop lockups (i.e. I can't do
> anything), but I can still hear my mp3s playing.  My mouse stops working
> on a whim, forcing me to use my keyboard to close apps and then switch
> to a pty to kill my messed up Gnome session.  Sound stops working for no
> apparent, although I can bring it back easily enough by restarting
> pulseaudio.
>
> Just a little while ago my desktop froze again and I had to do a hard
> power off to get it back.
>
> I'm not sure if it's something flaky with my hardware or if it's Fedora
> 12 that's somehow hosed.  My PC at work runs Fedora 12 flawlessly, so
> I'm starting to think my hardware is wonky, but I'm not yet convinced.

Are you using an Asus motherboard such as the M3N78-VM?  There are
known problems with the nVidia MCP78S-based USB ports on the Asus
boards (not just the model above) that can cause random lock ups.  This
isn't a Linux-only thing--there are a number of reports that it does it
with Winblows also.  The dead giveaway is the mouse and/or keyboard
freezing with X starting to suck up 100% of one of the CPU cores.  I
know--I've been bitten by it quite a lot recently.

There's no fix that I know of.  It appears to be a hardware design
issue.  I have purchased a new motherboard (can't remember the make)
that specifically does NOT use nVidia.  It uses an AMD chipset instead
of nVidia and an ATI video card.  I haven't installed it yet, but will
this weekend.  Also will give me a chance to poke around with the ATI
video drivers (fun, fun, fun!).
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- Rick Stevens, Systems Engineer, C2 Hosting          ricks at nerd.com -
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-      "Doctor!  My brain hurts!"  "It will have to come out!"       -
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