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View Full Version : [SOLVED] Problems Solved: Frozen Screens and Lockup on Shutdown



jrc
June 25th, 2012, 02:20 AM
Brief Description of my Hardware:
1. Dell Inspiron 530 desktop computer
2. Dell Optical USB Mouse
3. 128MB NVIDIA GeForce 8300GS video card

I've used many different releases of Ubuntu over the years without any problems. However, my recent upgrade from 11.10 to 12.04 (Precise Pangolin) was driving me crazy because of constant screen freezes (usually requiring a hard reboot) and occasional lockups when I attempted to shut down my computer.

The screen freezes usually happened when I was scrolling (with the mouse wheel) through my Thunderbird inbox or when I was scrolling through web pages in Firefox. In addition, sometimes the screen wouldn't "refresh" after I scrolled down and I would be left with a black space at the bottom of the screen. The computer shutdown lockup problem didn't happen as often as the scrolling freezes but all shutdowns seemed to take more time than I had previously been used to. The problems were occurring so frequently that I was thinking of reverting to my prior version of Ubuntu.

After studying the Ubuntu Forums for hours on end I decided I would try two different things before giving up on 12.04:

1) I removed the NVIDIA proprietary driver; and
2) I disabled automatic connection to Ubuntu One when my computer starts.

PROBLEMS SOLVED! I don't know whether the problems were caused by the NVDIA proprietary driver or the automatic connection to Ubuntu One or both. I had to spend a LOT of time searching the Forums, but I'm glad I was able to work through this with the help of people's postings.

Thanks to all of you who have taken the time to report your problems and share your solutions in the Forums.