[ale] Memory or Software? (Scott Castaline)

[Ryan Marshall]

> Can anybody tell me whether I'm experiencing a software bug or if it's a
> hardware issue?
>
> I've noticed that certain functions over a period of time stop working
> or become erratic. It became very noticeable with Songbird where
> intermittently my "Last Played" Date/Time would be blank, even though
> the track had played. If I restarted Songbird it would display correctly
> for a while and then start again. It seems almost like a heat related
> problem as it intensifies the longer the system is on. On first morning
> boot, all is well, but later the problem comes to play.
>
> I've had also for a while, but never thought too much about it until now
> have lost my scroll wheel function when switching desktops. Not a big
> issue, but when it happens I have to actually point to the desktop I
> want and then click. Then of course, there was the issue that I asked
> about a few months back that affected my display and someone pointed out
> that I probably hadn't set the fonts settings correctly for my LCD
> display. This problem periodically returns even though the settings are
> correct, but if I open and close the dialogs the problem sometimes stops.
>
> I have a Gig-a-Byte MoBo (GA-MA790FX-DS5) with an AMD Athlon 64 x2, 4GB
> RAM (OCZ 800MHz), 1ea Diamond PCIe x16 HD3650 Video w/1GB VRAM. I have
> never seen memory usage reach 2GB or above, but, the problem seems to
> happen when I have a large # files open in say OpenOffice or especially
> Adobe Reader. I have also seen where if I have a OOo Calc sheet open to
> max. window display and I am using the calc to verify a formula, when I
> switch back to calc part of the calculator remains displayed on top of
> my spreadsheet. Could this be a driver issue? Or could it be ATI chips?
> Or maybe just bad VRAM or RAM?
>
> Any opinions

Bad VRAM usually causes artifacts on the screen.  Moreso than the
application UIs become undead, but lines on the screen, weird dots and
sometimes the screen stops refreshing entirely.

I'm inclined to think this might be due to the video driver,
especially with an ATi card.  The first thing I would do is turn off
compositing (compiz) if you've got it on and see how that goes.  Past
that, I'd update or roll back the driver.  Neither the binary nor the
open source ATi linux drivers are particularly good but last I checked
they were passable for 2D desktops.

Then, I'd check for heat issues, memtest, etc, etc, hardware stuff.