Had Ubuntu 16.04LTS for 6 days now... a bumpy road from windows 10

[QLee]

Several knowledgeable posters are already involved here and they are doing a good job analyzing symptoms and making corrections but it seems something has not yet been considered. That 2940 CPU is a "Bay Trail" and the freezing may be due to that and making it appear that something else might be related. Freezing that appears random and freezing while idle are a couple of the symptoms. There are several threads on the forums regarding "Bay Trail" CPUs which could be found using those keywords. Perhaps a small change in the BIOS or the addition to the command line in GRUB of intel_idle.max_cstate=1 would stop the freezing so the other fixes would be more effective. That CPU should have enough power for regular Ubuntu, I'm posting this from a 16.04 system with a similar chip.

[nexhuntr]

Thanks QLee
I've been starting to feel like either I'm completely inept or loosing touch with what's going on. These guys are working very hard to help solve my problem but I feel like I'm not getting anywhere.
To answer a few previous questions. I've not checked RAM because honestly I'm not sure how to do that. I've checked my hard drive and every test I know I've been able to either correct errors, or there aren't errors to correct. I've changed routers, gone other places to have stable internet, plugged in as well and the freezing still occurs.
It was the reasons why I went with Ubuntu in the first place, because I should be able to run it. I'll be looking for the forums about the "Bay Trail" CPU. I've been pondering if that was my problems all along.

[QLee]

Thanks QLee
I've been starting to feel like either I'm completely inept or loosing touch with what's going on.

Yes, well when there is an intermittent problem it can be extremely hard to pin down, you are getting symptoms that could be from a hardware problem so there may be more than one trouble. Maybe this can help eliminate the freezing.

It is pretty easy to test the command line option. When GRUB comes up for your OS choice, press the e key to edit (instructions at the bottom of the GRUB screen), go down to the line with "linux", on Ubuntu 16.04 it will look something like this (different depending on what you have installed at the present time).

linux	/boot/vmlinuz-4.4.0-34-generic root=UUID=50d978a9-da74-4abc-9654-6104e7ce2a74 ro  quiet splash $vt_handoffp

, after the quiet splash insert the option, intel_idle.max_cstate=1, then follow the instructions at the bottom of the screen to boot with that line. After you have booted, test by opening a terminal and entering:

cat /sys/module/intel_idle/parameters/max_cstate

, it will return a number (hopefully 1). If so, then use it like that for a while to see if the freezes stop. That is a temporary test for that boot only.

It could be added to default GRUB if that solves the freezing problem. (You will find instructions for that in your search.) There may also be a BIOS option that could be used to disable the cstate change but that might depend on what the manufacturer of your mainboard has chosen and might be difficult to decipher.

[nexhuntr]

absolute SPOON moment, hence took 2 days to answer this...
cat /sys/module/intel_idle/parameters/max_cstate
9

I lost my mind after all that
I checked the grub file... I still saw max_cstate=1 and I didn't get anywhere... I had to find out what cstate 9 was... looks like a pretty deep low level power use.
Pulling out my hair, as also I couldn't get into the boot grub until today by hitting Esc key then continuing on... It was there that I saw something like this...

/boot/vmlinuz-4.4.0-34-generic root=UUID=50d978a9-da74-4abc-9654-6104e7ce2a74 ro quiet splash intel_idel.max_cstate=1$vt_handoffp
I wished I had more hair, so I could pull it out.
I reached spoon level 9 now didn't I?
It took me two hours to figure out how to change what I did wrong... I'm nearly ready to move this into [SOLVED] I'm simply testing now to see if that truly solved my freezing issues. I'll get back to everyone in a short while.

[QLee]

I imagine almost all of us have had things like that happen to us along the way.

The important thing is you figured it out, best of luck in the future.