Frequent lockups :(

[brian]

On Mon, 28 Mar 2016 15:43:03 +0200, you wrote:

>2016-03-28, 09:11 (-0400); brian escriu:
>> Is there anybody else out there using Debian Jessie 64-bit and XFCE on
>> an AMD PC who, for the 3 or 4 days, has been seeing frequent lockups
>> of their PC? The crashes seem to occur when I'm using a browser, and
>> using Iceweasel is worse than using Chromium. When it happens, that's
>> it, everything locks solid, mouse cursor won't move, the keyboard
>> doesn't appear to work, the display clock stops, the only thing I can
>> do is to use the reboot switch. The only thing I notice is that the
>> drive access light is still flickering (once every 5-10 seconds) and
>> there's been a disk repair needed every time I've had to reboot. 
>> 
>> I know there was an amd64-microcode package in the last bunch of
>> updates, it's for AMD processors other than mine (a Phenom II 6-core)
>> so I uninstalled that, with no apparent effect on the problem. 
>> 
>> The 'about XFCE' dialog gives the version as "4.10, distributed by
>> Debian". 
>> 
>> Anybody have any ideas, please? The lockups are happening every couple
>> of hours or so. 
>
>Look for clues in /var/log/dmesg.*
>
>In the past I've had a few lockups like the ones you describe.  One was
>casused by a catastrophic hard drive failure, and the other one was caused
>by a buggy graphical driver that crashed the kernel.
>____

Thanks - I'm trying to work my way through it, but it's SLOW going.
This sort of stuff is really a bit too near the metal for me - I'm a
retired database programmer, always used to reckon that my
responsibilities ended at the keyboard!

Brian.