Ubuntu Session freezes up; Xubuntu session fine

[W-Unit]

Hi all,

I've been running purely off of Ubuntu for about a week now and I must say I'm really enjoying it overall.

However, from the get-go, a regular Ubuntu session would randomly freeze up entirely (requiring me to cut power to the PC in order to reboot).
This happened a few times on the same day that I installed Ubuntu, then didn't happen again for several days. So I assumed it was a fluke.
Now I've messed around with the graphics drivers a bit (although I've ended up undoing everything; drivers & settings should be back to defaults, hopefully), and it seems to have brought the freezing problem back, only worse. Now I cannot even open a Ubuntu session for more than a minute or two before it freezes up.

I CAN run a Xubuntu session just fine... At least, Xubuntu has yet to freeze up on me.
I would prefer, however, to run the regular Ubuntu sessions. I already had gnome all customized & like I wanted it :mad:, don't want to repeat that process for xfce.

Thanks for any help you can provide :)

Ubuntu Version 12.10

[ajgreeny]

What is your hardware, particularly the graphics card, as unity, ie Ubuntu needs much higher graphics capability than Xubuntu?

I would bet my bottom dollar that you are using a machine that is on the edge, capability wise, of being able to run Unity properly and therefore will be limited to another DE, unless, of course, you just need to ensure you have the correct graphics driver installed.

[W-Unit]

Thanks for the speedy reply!

Well, I've been fiddling with the computer for the past couple hours... Almost immediately after making my earlier post, Xubuntu started exhibiting the same freezing up behavior. Things seemed to be spiraling downwards... First Xubuntu would run for a minute or two, then freeze, then it started freezing up before I even got past the login screen, then the next time I booted the screen was just a garbagey static-y looking image (yikes!).
I'm wondering if there is a possible hardware fault, overheating issue.... Something like that. Only, this kind of stuff never happened on Windows 7 :-s

So I reinstalled Ubuntu from my USB drive (I used the reinstall option that allows you to keep your settings and files and such)... Currently running a regular Ubuntu session right now; so far so good. I'll let you know how it goes.
Thanks again:p

Oh, and my hardware info...
Proc: Intel Core i7 920 @ 2.667 GHz (HyperThreading and SpeedStep currently disabled in a probably-pointless attempt to increase stability)
Mem: Corsair 6GB (3x2GB) DDR3-1600 SDRAM (Triple Channel)
GPU: ATI Radeon HD 5850
Mobo: Asus P6T Deluxe v2

[ajgreeny]

What driver are you using for the ATI Radeon HD 5850 card?