just to let you know this isn't a problem anymore, i've fixed it right, firstly, Kubuntu was freezing after about 10 mins & only was to recover was "rst" & obviously run fsch manually on / so installed Debian (Lenny b2, on the same HDD) which ran perfectly for about an hour, then Debian started freezing so reset it was, Kubun now wouldn't boot & during boot of Debian it conplained about "unable to <something> on USB <something> now with me using a USB mouse, i assumed either the mouse or a USB port had gone to the big computer shop in the sky hold on, it gets better now kubuntu wasn't booting & i thought Debian was. . . . . . nope, both debian & kubuntu wouldn't boot and both said something about "load the kernel image first" at this i thought WTF, they both booted earlier, so, i thought a bit then i figured DBAN the tw4ting hdd about 7 hours later dban had done it's thing, i then started install of kbun & then debian, then kbun started freezing so i reset & guess what? yep, kbun wouldn't boot, so i thought "fine, i'll use debian" i booted debian, and yeah it froze, at this point i wasn't in the best of moods, but i thought, no, remain calm & have a cig, cos i usually do my best thinking while i have a cig but, no the answer wasn't coming
The only time Kubuntu and Debian froze on me was when I was using the b43 driver for my wireless adapter. But I am suspecting this is not the case here.... so my vote was - something else... :dry:
Have you tried testing the memory? If you have bad RAM, no OS will be stable under those conditions. Also, unless you have nuclear launch codes on your HDD, DBAN will just prematurely age your HDD. IMO, the best way to completely wipe a drive to zeros is just... well, wipe it with zeros, no BS. As in, boot to a live distro, and run the following (assuming you're logged in as root, and the target HDD is /dev/sda): Code: dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda
What was the problem then? I've had Ubuntu lock up on me before. It used to lock up randomly and I had to turn off at the power button. The problem turned out to be a compatibility problem between the Geforce 7200 GS I was using, the nVidia driver that came with Gutsy at the time, and something the Ubuntu team had done with their packaging. I now use a Geforce 8400 GS and Hardy Heron and the problem went away.
well you were all right, the prob was the 80 pin IDE cable i replaced it with a previously replaced cable - and it didn't work - same prob, then (for no reason) i put the original cable back, and it worked :jump2: so, linux is plagued by some hardware problems too (but far less than an OS from a company starting with M and ending with icrosoft) the error message about unable to <something> on USB 2:2" is still there in Debian, so i may replace m mouse when i can afford it