[PLUG] [Solved] Need Troubleshooting Help for Flashing Screen

[Casey Bralla <MailList@nerdworld.org>]

Thanks to all for the excellent advice.  I have been able to resolve the 
issue.

Steve Shim's suggestion abut a bad a hard drive was a good one because the 
live system would not have used the hard drive.   I ran all teh SMART disk 
tests, and even ran the TRIM command, but unfortunately, this did not fix the 
problem.

Joe Rosato's bug reports do seem to be the same thing I experienced.

Lee Marzke and Steve Litt both had a great insight about the home configuration 
files being damaged,   I didn't try using LXDE as Steve suggested, but it would 
have worked because the KDE configuration files were somehow damaged.  I renamed 
all the ~/. config files and then restarted KDE.   Immedately, it all worked.

BTW, thanks to Steve Litt for the troubleshouting e-book download at 
http://www.troubleshooters.com/twb

So to summarize, the fix was to completely recreate the KDE configuration files 
by deleting all the ~/. files that KDE uses.


Casey





On Monday, March 27, 2017 04:52:46 PM Casey Bralla wrote:
> This is a very weird computer problem that has me flummoxed, and I was
> hoping that someone could offer troubleshooting suggestions.
> 
> My screen has gone crazy.   Menus take a second to open, screens don't
> update immediately, and then update only part of the screen.  Even terminal
> sessions (under KDE) display weird behavior with the cursor jumping forward
> and backward.
> 
> 
> Here is a short video of the problem:
> http://www.Bralla.com/downloads/Linux-DesktopFlashingProblem-2017-03-27.mp4
> 
> 
> Here's the backstory:
> 
> I'm running Gentoo stable, with KDE desktop on a dual monitor nVidia/nouveau
> system.  The system is about 6 years old (AMD Phenom) with 8 GBytes of RAM
> on an Asus motherboard.
> 
> Recently, one of the monitors abruptly died (pure white screen, no monitor
> setup menu).  After cursing, I dug out an older DVI monitor and got back to
> work.   But then I noticed something odd.  (NOTE:  The first monitor dying
> may be irrelevant... that's part of what I find confusing.)
> 
> I noticed that after about 10 minutes of use, the screen would start to act
> flaky.  This was very apparent when I'd switch from one KDE virtual desktop
> to another.  The new screen would not immediately be shown like it normally
> would.  Also, activating the KDE menu would sometimes be slow.  Also also,
> the screen would often "flash" around the updated portions.
> 
> 
> I assumed that the dying monitor had taken the video card with it, so bought
> another nVidia card, but got the same effect.  Since then, I've done the
> following tests, all with negative results:
> 
> 1.  Removed the video card and run the built-in nVidia graphics adapter on
> the motherboard.
> 2.  Ran memtest (no problems)
> 3.  Removed half the RAM and swapped all the DIMMs around.
> 4.  Unplugged and powered-down an extra hard drive, case fan, and DVD burner
> to reduce the load on the power supply.
> 5.  Shut down every application, including akonadi.
> 6.  Rebooted with an older kernel that had never had a problem.
> 7.  Recompiled the Gentoo "sytem" files ("emerge -e system")
> 8.  Ran a quick SMART diagnosis on my SSD.
> 
> I figured I probably blew the motherboard somehow, but then I discovered
> this:
> 
> 
> *** If I run a live version of Mint Linux (KDE) it works fine! ***
> 
> 
> So while I had thought this must be a hardware problem, the fact that a live
> distro runs fine seems to negate that hypothesis.
> 
> 
> Anybody got any suggestions of what to try?  Any idea how this might happen.

-- 

Casey Bralla
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