Screen goes blank after a while

**theknuckler** · May 5th, 2013

Howdy ya'll. I'm running 12.04 and every now and then randomly while I'm surfing the internet, or whatever, the screen will just turn white, and I cannot get out of it without doing a hard reboot. I had this problem with 11.10 and I thought maybe if I upgraded that would help. It didn't. Could it be a hardware problem? I reall am computer illiterate, especially with ubuntu, so I have no idea what to do.

**romain.astie** · May 5th, 2013

Seems like this may be a variant of a known bug: https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/913555
Only difference is that your screen goes white whereas the bugs report says it goes black.
If it is this, then it's a software problem, not hardware. Maybe it has been fixed in later versions... I don't know

**claracc** · May 5th, 2013

Originally Posted by theknuckler

Howdy ya'll. I'm running 12.04 and every now and then randomly while I'm surfing the internet, or whatever, the screen will just turn white, and I cannot get out of it without doing a hard reboot. I had this problem with 11.10 and I thought maybe if I upgraded that would help. It didn't. Could it be a hardware problem? I reall am computer illiterate, especially with ubuntu, so I have no idea what to do.

It would be good to obtain advice to know what kind og graphic card you have.

In a xterm, write the following code

Code:

sudo lshw -C video

and post the rsults here.

**theknuckler** · May 5th, 2013

Originally Posted by claracc

It would be good to obtain advice to know what kind og graphic card you have.

In a xterm, write the following code

Code:

sudo lshw -C video

and post the rsults here.

*-display:0
description: VGA compatible controller
product: Mobile 4 Series Chipset Integrated Graphics Controller
vendor: Intel Corporation
physical id: 2
bus info: pci@0000:00:02.0
version: 07
width: 64 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: msi pm vga_controller bus_master cap_list rom
configuration: driver=i915 latency=0
resources: irq:45 memory:d0000000-d03fffff memory:c0000000-cfffffff ioport:e140(size=8)
*-display:1 UNCLAIMED
description: Display controller
product: Mobile 4 Series Chipset Integrated Graphics Controller
vendor: Intel Corporation
physical id: 2.1
bus info: pci@0000:00:02.1
version: 07
width: 64 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: pm bus_master cap_list
configuration: latency=0
resources: memory:d0400000-d04fffff

i dont know what that means but thanks for the replies so far! Also, I upgraded t 12.10 and the problem has been persisting... sometimes after 10 minutes... sometimes after an hour.