Re: Asus motherboard hangs in X

[Russ Cook <russcook@mbo.net>]

Matthew Robinson wrote:

> Russ Cook wrote:
>
>> I have an Asus A8N32-SLI Deluxe motherboard with AMD Athlon 4800 dual
>> core cpu, with 4 MB of Corsair TwinX ram sticks.  I have an older
>> GeForce4 MX 420 graphics board with 64 MB ram.  I have updated my bios
>> to version 1303, with no impact.  I am running kernel
>> 2.6.8-11-amd64-generic.  I have also run the smp kernels, with the same
>> problem.
>>
>> When interacting in X, the system will hang unexpectedly.  I can ssh to
>> the machine from another box, and the command 'top' will show eithe
>> XFree86 or Xorg (whichever is running) to be using 100 % cpu (when
>> running smp).
>>
>> The machine has never frozen on me when running commands from ssh at
>> another box.  Google search has shown many people having similar
>> problems with various motherboards.  I have run memtest on all my memory
>> sticks, one at a time, and all together, with no detected faults.
>>
>> I also tried loading the nvidia video driver, but no help.
>>
>> I have tried the Knoppix 5.0.1 and Kubuntu 6.06 live CDs, and get the
>> same problem.  Is anyone else running this same motherboard without
>> problems?  If you had problems and solved them, can you share your
>> process?
>> Does Nvidia offer drivers for the NForce4 motherboard chipset, and if
>> so, does it make any difference?  I plan to upgrade my video board, but
>> I want to get a stable system first, before putting more $ into it.
>> Could the older video board be part of the problem?
>>
>> Any help most gratefully accepted.
>>
>> Thanks,
>>   Russ
>>
>>   
>
> Try changing the driver in xorg.conf to 'vesa'. This will be much
> slower than the binary Nvidia drivers, but if it works, youve found
> your problem.
>
>
>
>
Thanks Matt.  I have changed the driver to Vesa, and so far I can't make
it crash.  I am now upgrading from stable to unstable (amd64) and
downloading a current smp kernel.  If all stays stable (pun intended), then
I'll ask the experts for suggestions regarding graphics boards and drivers.

Thanks much,
  russ