Complete Screen Freeze on Ubuntu 16.04

Question

I am having issues with my recently built pc. The screen will freeze while doing anything, requiring me to perform a hard shutdown and reboot in order to end the problem. Trying to do CTRL + Shift + F1-7 doesn't work during a freeze either.

Digging through my syslogs, the only thing I could find that could be the issue is the error:

kernel: [   10.945208] [drm:intel_dp_link_training_clock_recovery [i915]] *ERROR* too many voltage retries, give up

I am using the integrated graphics card of my CPU, since this computer is not for anything intensive such as gaming, but to be a Plex server.

• My Motherboard is an ASRock H110-HDV LGA1151
• My CPU is an Intel Core i5-6400 Skylake

I added those because I read some forum posts saying that using the integrated graphics is the issue, but I wasn't sure since the posted solutions did not work for me. My kernel is at 4.8.0.-41, which I believe is the latest version.

How can I fix this and end the random screen freezes? Thank you very much!

Solution 1

If you have Intel this may help you. I was having this same problem fairly frequently (3-4 times a day) and nothing I did including upgrading to the 4.8 kernel helped.

Then I found this:

Ubuntu 15.10 and 16.04 keep freezing randomly

Particularly the 1st answer provided the solution that worked for me as I no longer have these "freeze-ups" on my laptop.

= = = Quote of what worked for me = = =

However, this problem(where nothing but forced shutdown works to recover from the freeze) may be related to the kernel and if kernel upgrading cannot solve the problem, then an work-around could be to add the statement intel_idle.max_cstate=1 in the grub configuration file.

Before doing the following make a COPY of your current GRUB file so you can restore it if you happen to mistype something...

sudo nano /etc/default/grub

There is a line in that:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash" (like this)

replace with (all 1 line):

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash intel_idle.max_cstate=1"

Save it - (CTRL+O)

then..

sudo update-grub

sudo reboot

Since I've made this change I rarely have any more freeze-ups and if I do they only last for maybe 5-10 seconds then clear up.

Solution 2

SOLVED after 7 months of HELL

goto "synaptic-settings-repositories-additional drivers" see if you have a "Unknown Unknown" radio button if you have then select it as i have in picture ,two weeks not one freeze.

Comments

[Power_Man_2017]

Thank you for your answer. I'm pretty new at this, so how would I test the main line kernel?

[Trent Lloyd]

Instructions here: wiki.ubuntu.com/Kernel/MainlineBuilds

[Power_Man_2017]

This seemed to have fixed my issue! Thank you very much!

[Power_Man_2017]

I wanted to inform you that the problem came back today. I didn't do anything different, but the screen started freezing again.