[Novalug] computer hangs up

[james]

I also had the same problem a few years ago with Ubuntu. Turned out to
be something to do with my video card and X. I edited something in
xorg.conf (disabling DRI, I think) and the random albeit not frequent
freezing ceased.

I was/am using ATI radeon cards, circa 1999~2002. Recent versions of
Ubuntu (clean installs, wiping all config) no longer have that hiccup
and I don't have to edit xorg.conf anymore.

Here's the thread where I found my answer many moons ago:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=569166

On Wed, Feb 27, 2008 at 1:51 PM, Greg Walker <greg at lightdrizzle.net> wrote:
> I had the same problem with Ubuntu but I think it was related to my
>  NVidia card/driver.  X would lock up but the computer was completely
>  accessible and progs would still run.  dmesg pointed me to the problem.
>   Once I swapped out the card everything worked great.
>
>  HTH,
>  Greg
>
>
>
>
>  Bonnie Dalzell wrote:
>  >
>  > Every now and then my Linux Ubuntu desktop hangs up. Mouse does not
>  > move, trying a keyboard access such as cntrl+alt+F1 does not flip me to
>  > a console screen.
>  >
>  > I let it sit and run but control does not come back so eventually I do a
>  > cold reboot.
>  >
>  > For a while I thought it migh be the wireless mouse/keyboard so I
>  > reverted to using a plug in mouse and keyboard.
>  >
>  > It is rare enough that I am not seeing a pattern.
>  >
>  > Anyone else have this happen?
>  >
>  > Any suggestions as to how to try and figure this out/
>  >