I've noticed a lot of posts about various random freezing of Ubuntu (intrepid, karmic..) Many talk about Flash player in Firefox.

Some have spoken of a memory leak in Firefox.
So I switched to Chrome - same crashing.
Youtube videos are another common one.

The symptoms are that the system can be idle and it freezes with only a hard boot as medicine. Sometimes it will freeze within a few minutes of boot.

I have also found that VLC and Kaffeine crash after about 5 mins.

For a while I thought it was network so I disabled it. No improvement.

I have a Dell laptop (vostro 1500) and others have also spoken about a crash where the caps lock and number lock lights flash.

I am fairly sure that in my case that the problem is that the Crucial memory is damaged. I have exchanged it and so far so good.

What I am wondering is whether, given the frequency of such posts (while some are obviously a different cause) is it possible that Ubuntu could crash and physically damage the memory? I noticed when "reseating" it after a crash that it was perhaps a bit hot.

Mine was working fine for nearly two years, then I upgraded to Karmic.

This is not necessarily a question that I am asking for an answer on but one that I am raising because so many people are having similar symptoms. We can't ALL have dodgy memory.

Scot C.