Occaisonally my Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy Desktop PC will freeze for no
apparant reason. There does not seem to be a pattern to it. What will
normally happen is that the window/app I am working in will turn grey
as if taking a long time to respond. During this time the Desktop will
not accept any input from me and I can even see the system monitor
graph freeze up in the taskbar.
There is nothing obvious imprinted in /var/log at the times these
happen. I suspect something low-level perhaps in the SATA HDD being
faulty. I once fixed a Windows XP laptop which responded like treacle,
that turned out to be a HDD needed replacement. The PC is an Asus
Pundit machine that I somewhat unwisely bought from an eBay seller
outside the normal eBay channels, to my custom spec. It arrived with
signs of use despite the seller claiming brand-new.
The lshw can be found here:
http://pastebin.com/m250b9ef6
