System freezes after opening screensaver dialogue box

[cainwen296]

The problem is more of an annoyance than anything else. I resurrected an old Dell Inspiron 8000 laptop with Xubuntu (used mostly for checking email, listening to internet radio, etc), and for the most part it runs exactly like I would expect an ancient laptop to run--a little slow on the uptake, but it works.

However, I cannot adjust the screensaver. Anytime the dialogue box is opened, everything hangs, and requires a forced restart. No combination of keys seems to break it out.

Has anyone encountered this before? for some reason, the dialogue always opens to "molecules", which I have heard causes problems on older systems. If this is to blame, is there anyway to adjust the screensaver or remove "molecules" without opening the GUI dialogue box?

Thanks