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I am attempting a fresh install of Ubuntu. I've gone through the install process several times. I experience crashes after booting into the new system, or sometimes before finishing installation.

The crash: Video freezes completely, without warning. Mouse cursor will move. Ctrl+Alt+Bksp does nothing. I cannot Ctrl+Alt+F2 into tty2. I can Alt+SysRq+REISUB and reboot the computer. Crashes seem semi-random, but they will occasionally appear while installing Ubuntu, while using Gparted, or while switching themes.

The troubleshooting: This computer runs Windows 8 with absolutely no problems, including 3D gaming. I ran memtest86 through 5 passes with no errors. I tried installing Ubuntu 16.04 and 14.04. I tried limiting max_cstate to 1 in GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX. I tried installing to a different hard drive, with all other hard drives physically unplugged. I tried installing all available software updates immediately after booting into the new system. I tried updating the Linux kernel to 4.8.12, even beyond what is available in an Ubuntu release. The crash occurs regardless of whether I am using the nVidia video driver or open-source driver.

The only thing I see in /var/log/syslog is repeated resetting of some USB devices, sometimes rapidly. http://paste.ubuntu.com/23596804/

My hardware: Motherboard AsRock 970DE3/U3S3, CPU AMD 4 GHz FX-8350 8-core, RAM 2x4GB G.Skill F3-14900CL9D-8GBSR at 1600MHz, GPU EVGA GeForce GTX 550Ti

I am absolutely at my wit's end here. What else can I check?

Jimmy Davis
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2 Answers2

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Had a problem very similar to the one described: playing any video hard-crashed my Ubuntu 18.04.4 LTS and cold boot would be required. I uninstalled Videos (Totem) and installed VLC via the Ubuntu Software Center. Problem solved.

cedwin
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The nvidia tag makes me think it is an issue with the graphics driver. It helps us help you, if you tell us also the model of the nvidia card.

You can get started by adding the boot option nomodeset, and then it should work well enough to install a proprietary driver.

See these links and links from them for more details how to add a boot opiton,

My reply to a question at AskUbuntu: 'RAM drive'

A post at the Ubuntu Forums: 'Boot options'

sudodus
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