Unrelieved black popups and message boxes

[Temlakos]

On 02/20/2013 10:33 AM, Ed Greshko wrote:
> On 02/20/13 23:19, Temlakos wrote:
>> On 02/20/2013 10:04 AM, fred smith wrote:
>>> 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
>>>
>> I don't use Gnome. I use KDE. Do you suggest this is a KDE issue, and not an F18 or screen display driver issue?
>>
> I think this is the first time you mentioned you're using KDE.  And I don't think you've mentioned your video hardware or what driver you're using.
>
> However, since you are using KDE, have you tried a different "Desktop Theme"?
>
>

The video hardware is the built-in Intel chipset for HP Pavilion 
desktops. I use the Mesa driver, and that's up-to-date. I checked.

Why should KDE's themes be an issue?

Temlakos