Hello, all!

I'm running Ubuntu 14.04 on an Alienware laptop, dual-booting with Windows 8 (ugh). Beginning about a week ago, lightdm has started doing something which is not quite freezing. The display appears frozen, but if I shift to a tty and back (using Ctrl-Alt-F1 and then Ctrl-Alt-F7) everything is fine. Further, it appears that the GUI is actually running while the screen is static -- if e.g. I click a link in Chrome and the screen "freezes", once I shift back and forth the browser has already loaded the new page. It appears that the problem is only in the display aspect, not the running aspect. (Forgive my terminology; in many areas I am still a layman.) This occurs perhaps once every five to fifteen minutes. I think that each time it's "frozen" has been immediately after a mouse click, but I'm not 100% sure of that.

There is another display issue which may be related to the above -- at least, it seems to have started around the same time. When I switch back and forth from my tty as described above, the GUI does not display completely; there are black rectangles in various places on the screen (tending to the lower right) which clear up after a few seconds, or after I move the mouse to those areas, or once I switch workstations.

Obviously these problems are to the detriment of my productivity. I'd be glad to receive any advice from the denizens of this forum. Thank you!