Mint 17 freezing

[raitpngman]

I have an Asus U56E laptop which I upgraded from Ubuntu 12.04 to mint 17. I've been having problems with freezing which is growing worse. It does not happen all the time, but when it does freeze it will most likely be when I am opening libre office, a pdf, or a picture. Email and internet seem to be operating fine. When it freezes, the mouse will still move but no clicks are registered and the keyboard does not work. If it unfreezes, it will be for a very short time every 4 minutes.
I've tested the memory and it is okay and I've changed from a SSD to a regular hard drive with a clean install but it did not help the problem. My video graphics is only an Intel 915 integrated graphics so I don't have nvidia or ati graphics cards. I've tried to install the latest drivers from intel but it didn't help the problem. I'm a computer IT person but I've run out of things to try. Any ideas?

[Philquad]

from a hardware point of view
you can only throw a os at it so many times
maybe try windows?
otherwise, id say your lappy motherboard is rs (stuffed)
& no you dont or cant have nvida or ati graphics as its probably built in & there no expansion slot for a dedicated card, as in most laptops

ps.run a temp program, it may be overheating

[jwoegerbauer]

but when it does freeze it will most likely be when I am opening libre office, a pdf, or a picture. Email and internet seem to be operating fine. When it freezes, the mouse will still move but no clicks are registered and the keyboard does not work. If it unfreezes, it will be for a very short time every 4 minutes.

First of all

1. Running Libre Office with ex. only 6GB RAM it could quickly run into memory error. Do you have a swap partition enabled? One of the easiest way of increasing the responsiveness of your applications and guarding against out of memory errors in your applications is to add some swap space.
2. Do not turn Libre Office into a Christmas tree! Be very reluctant to install extensions. The more extensions you install, the slower Libre Office will become (and the less stable).
3. Have you installed Java? If so, then the performance of Libre Office can be enhanced greatly, when you disable Java in it. This will disable a few features, but usually you won't even miss those.

Secondly, if Libre Office still is faulty, replace it by another Office Suite, for example "WPS Office".

If the desktop application is working ( Cinnamon desktop and/or MATE desktop ?) as expected, and also all other applications that make use of the graphics card, then it is highly unlikely that it is the graphics card (driver) that is causing the trouble.


EDIT:

Found this report in the Internet:

I ran Linux Mint on a VM inside Windows for a while, enjoyed it, and never had any issues with it. Since installing on my hard drive it has started freezing every 5-10 minutes, and the only way to get it back is to either power down, or close the lid and reopen once it sleeps. I've also tried running Ubuntu on dual boot in the past, and while it never froze, the battery life was terrible, and the fan was constantly running. I'm experiencing the same battery/fan problem with Mint, which doesn't make sense to me, as Linux should be lighter on the CPU than windows.

[Philquad]

the 1st sentence says it all
maybe you should stick to ububtu

[jwoegerbauer]

Yes, Mint is arguably a better choice than Ubuntu for older or under-powered hardware!

[DB44]

The behaviour you have described is consistent with filling the memory. You may be able to confirm this by examining the logs either during or after such an incident. I am not familiar with the current version of Mint, but when this type of freeze occurs you can sometimes log in to another virtual terminal. Press, say Ctl-Alt-F2 for terminal 2, Ctl-Alt-F3 for terminal 3 etc. Usually, but not always, your X-Session will be on terminal 7, and you can get back to it with Ctl-Alt-F7, though if frozen the screen will not be redrawn or will take forever. Just find a terminal with a login prompt and login as root, or if root logins are not allowed login as your normal user and use sudo where necessary. You can then use, say, a command like meminfo to check the free memory, ps aux to determine what processes are running and kill or killall (with -9 if necessary) to terminate the offending programs. If necessary, you can even shut down or restart your X session without rebooting.

If the problem persists enabling or increasing the size of the swap partition as suggested above may be helpful. Also, you may have more luck with a different variant of the distro, for instance Cinnamon, KDE or Gnome if you are currently using Mate.

Good luck.

[raitpngman]

No, I'm not changing distros or going to windows. No need to resort to dusty arguments related to which is better. My computer is not overheating. I doubt it is hardware or it would manifest itself more randomly instead of mostly at times when opening certain programs.

Jwoegerbauer, Libre office is not the problem. I have the freezing issues with opening pdfs, jpgs, and office. I have never had problems (before I upgraded) running the latest libre office or other, more memory intensive, programs. As far as java goes, I have java-common and openjdk and ubuntu-restricted-extras installed.

DB44, Thanks for the helpful information. I have 4g memory and 8g swap space. I've never seen anything in the swap space but it is there when I run "ps aux". I've never been able to find anything in the logs with this*(see later). I opened a jpg and it froze, I was able to get to a terminal and did a memory check. Unfortunately, there was nothing unusual and the memory usage was entirely reasonable. I've never been able to go back to the screen because it doesn't redraw.

*I was running a script recently and it would freeze at slightly different places but it all had to do with writing to a log file. This was one reason I changed hard drives because I was wondering if it was something related to the hard drive. Unfortunately, it didn't go away.

I'm using Cinnamon and I'm starting to wonder if it is related to Cinnamon. I guess the only way to see if that is true is to switch desktops.

Any other ideas?

[lsemmens]

I like Cinnamon, but I have found that Mate seems to be more stable, so, yes, try different desktops.

[dai]

check your temperatures

[jwoegerbauer]

check your temperatures

Well known fact is that if the CPU / GPU starts to overheat it will automatically freeze or shutdown to prevent damage to the CPU / GPU. Therefore sometimes even the clean up of the fan does the job ...


BTW:

With a friend of mine running a Windows 8.1 computer it was the PSU that a permanent freeze / power off caused.

[dai]

BTW:

With a friend of mine running a Windows 8.1 computer it was the PSU that a permanent freeze / power off caused.

it is to common that people tend to run underpowered desktops

[mickstv]

I've been running mate 17 and then 17.1 and haven't had any problems. I do remember reading about some issues with intermittent keyboard and mouse freezes, have a look at the page linked below.

Other issues

If you're experiencing keyboard or mouse freezes, please check the following bug report:

If you own an AMD CPU with an MSI card and your computer keeps rebooting, please check the following bug report:

Linux Mint 17.1 is based on Ubuntu 14.04. Make sure to read the Ubuntu release notes.

[Philquad]

it is to common that people tend to run underpowered desktops

shame its NOT a desktop it is actually a laptop if you read his post

[raitpngman]

After 6 months I stumbled upon a solution.

I mount network shares via cifs in fstab on bootup. I connect to the network through my wireless. However, at times I disconnect from the network to connect to the internet via wireless. All the files were LOCAL files on MY COMPUTER. However, if I was disconnected from the network but the shares were still mounted, it would freeze various programs or the whole computer on opening or saving files located on the hard drive. Email and internet browser were not affected.

Thanks to all for your time and suggestions.

[bob_m_54]

I'm running Mint 17 Cinnamon 32bit on an old Toshiba M300 with 4Gb of RAM and it seems to run fine. I haven't experienced the lock ups you describe Libre Office either.
Here is a screen shot of my system Info just so you can see what I have.

Are you using 64bit maybe?

[lsemmens]

It appears that his shares were the problem, bob_m_54. i"m about to give Mint the flick again as it does not want to play well with my Windoze network and, sadly, is not robust enough for me to entrust all of my data to it, yet.

[bob_m_54]

Yeah, I'm only using it on a non critical machine at the moment, but it seems to be playing the game pretty well so far. I just never seem to be interested in firing up my win8.1 lappy at the moment though. Still got an XP box with a lot of my stuff on it. I should really get around to doing a final backup on that one too.